Cicadas And Nightmares
by Librarian00X
Summary: After 800 accumulated years of redundant death and reincarnation, you'd think Rika Furude would have seen it all. But this world is something else entirely...
1. Entropic Beginnings

"All I wanted were happy days," Rika said absently, staring out at nothing in particular, apparently talking to someone only see could see. Someone who, as far as the world was concerned, wasn't there. Someone that didn't exist to anyone else. "It's not much. I don't think it is, anyhow. Just a life to live. Grow up, get an education, find a job, maybe find love, start a family..." She shook her head, tears flowing casually down her face. She didn't seem to be aware of her surroundings, or that she was in fact crying. "Nothing that bad, you know? Just a little something. It's not much. It's all anyone can really ask for--a life. To live. But, here I am...time and time again, always something like this...heheh...heh...it's kind of funny, really...to think that for all my troubles, this is what we get. Our punishment for trying to be happy."

Keiichi looked over at the corner the blue-haired girl had backed into, hugging her knees, and shook his head pitifully. The poor girl...for someone so young to be put through something terrible like this...he knew what was happening around him, and what could happen, but the individual circumstances were bound to be different, not to mention the emotional damage that seemed to be taking place...what he wouldn't give just to sit down next to her, put his arms around her, say something comforting, meaningful...but, no. Of all the times Keiichi could remember, words had failed him the worst of his entire life right now. For once, Keiichi Maebara, the "Magician of Words," could find nothing to say for his traumatized younger friend.

It wasn't unreasonable or unexpected, of course--the last 24 hours had been enough to dry up just about anyone's conversations, sap what little energy and enthusiasm for words right out of their heads like a psychological sponge. Emotionally and mentally exhausted, Keiichi thought that it was nothing short of a miracle that he wasn't huddled in a corner mumbling to himself, too. He knew, at least intellectually, that he should feel devastated--his entire hometown, including his best friend and family were all dead, and he knew that it should be crippling to him. To _anyone,_ really. But, no, there he stood, looking at his friend with a heavy heart, contemplating his exact state of mind...perhaps it was something akin to shock. Numbness and detachment. That seemed to fit the bill, for his case. So that was it--he was in a daze. He'd be devastated later. Right now, both he and his body wanted absolutely nothing to do with anything that didn't directly involve him surviving a moment longer. Through this? Maybe. Survival at all for any period of time would be a nice treat, too.

Keiichi was stirred from his thoughts by Rena, who bore an equally disheartened expression as he. She held his arm loosely, staring up at him with begging eyes. Begging...for what, he wondered? For solace? For answers? Maybe just a little attention in the little peace that had been offered to them? She wore her usual outfit--a white dress with ribbons, black stockings, brown boots, a beret...all of which was torn in countless places and stained a brownish-red from the countless casualties inflicted by her or whoever happened to be standing directly behind her at the time. Her eyes were just as expressive as her words--deep, glistening, a navy-blue in color. Beautiful, now that he got to looking at them. Her eyes gazed into his, probing him, begging...for what, though? Not that it mattered. At this point, Keiichi had a feeling that, no matter what it was that she was asking him silently for, he would fail to satisfy her request. He had only ever failed this far into the game, after all. It only made sense that he would predict his own failures indefinitely.

Shion Sonozaki, the spitting image of Mion Sonozaki, bar outfit and hair-texture, poked her head up from the wooden hatch that led to the basement floor below. "Hey, you guys, I need some help with this," she said to anyone who would listen, very well anticipating the possibility that everyone here with her was too lethargic and depressed to move a step further, let alone for her aid. Her long hair, an unusually striking emerald, cut through the shadowy interior of the Furude Shrine like a light-less torch, casting its faded image throughout the room for all to see--anyone who wasn't dead or dying, anyway. She'd prided herself with its color before for as long as she could remember. Now? What difference did it make? It wasn't going to help her live any longer. If anything, it was only going to get in the way. A lot of good _that_did. As if they needed help getting themselves killed.

Keiichi nodded to Shion without a word, who once again vanished down into the Furude Shrine's cellar like a cat in the darkness. On the top floor, there were a massive assortment of bizarrely-crafted devices for torture, pain, and death, so it wasn't the weapons that had him worried, rather the supply-half of the equation--all of the weapons in the world wouldn't do them any good if they didn't have any food or water. It was, of course, a sin to be ransacking such a sacred place with their filthy shoes, blood-stained clothes, and unspeakable acts just outside, but this was a bit of an emergency--if the statue of the great Oyashiro-sama in the shrine was any indicator of the god's actual existence, surely she would understand that they were in dire straights. It was either live a deviant, or die sinless. Personally, he would rather live a deviant. Dying was...just...no. No dying. Not now, anyway. Maybe some other time.

Keiichi sighed, again realizing he had become lost in thought. _Seem to be doing a lot of that, lately,_he mused to himself. Oh, well. It didn't really matter. Maybe all this thinking would help them survive a little longer. Maybe. He looked down to Rena, who was still begging him with her sorrowful expression. "Hey," he said gently, as if the tone of his voice could cause her to crumble. "Wanna help? Shion's gonna need help with those boxes. We could use your cleaver."

Rena shrugged to no one in particular, figuring she had nothing better to do. She didn't move, however, as she turned her attention to a rather disheartened Rika, who also appeared to be on the verge of a nervous breakdown. She hadn't stopped muttering to herself the entire time they'd been standing there.

Keiichi followed her stare, guessing her thoughts. "There's nothing we can do for her," he explained softly. "Let's just leave her alone for a little while. Let her get her head together." _God knows we all need a little of that,_ he added silently.

Rena said nothing, exchanging glances between the two before slowly making her way over to the hatch Shion had disappeared into and following suit. Her slow, cautious movements only went to confirm her state of mind.

Our _state of mind, _Keiichi thought to himself, looking back to Rika one more time. _Sorry, Rika...but I don't know what to do._Ashamed and uncomfortable being in her presence, Keiichi quickly aligned himself with the ladder that led down and went in after his two companions. _...for anything._

Finishing up her ramble to herself and realizing she was alone, Rika leaned her head back and rested it against the solid wood, which seemed somehow to shie at her touch, despite the fact that it couldn't have moved even if it wanted to. It was wood, after all. She closed her eyes, taking in every detail about the anxiety and fatigue she was feeling, and wished it away. It wouldn't, of course, but it was a good adaption to the incredible stress that she had been feeling--imagining all her pain, suffering, and agony, and just picturing it all disappearing, swirling into a spiraling nothingness...it was oddly soothing. For the both of them. "Remind me again," she said aloud, "how this all managed to come to pass."

Hanyuu appeared--or rather, appeared to _her--_sitting beside Rika, hugging her knees as Rika was, dressed in a rather bulky "priestess outfit" that Rika had become familiar with. In the Endless June, the Labyrinth, she had played her part as the priestess in the Cotton Drifting festival a thousand times over, having worn that particular outfit a thousand times to boot. Not that exact outfit, of course, as it was likely destroyed when Hanyuu was originally killed back whenever this whole arc-thing had started, but it bore a striking similarity. Whoever had made the modern apparel at least knew what they were doing when they starting sewing. The horns took away her otherwise innocent child-like appearance, which the lavender hair seemed to somewhat compensate for. And, there was always the sweet, tiny voice, which was now strained by the very same stress that was plaguing her physical companion--the only one in the world she could communicate and interact with. Her only friend. "Rika...I've told you three times already. I know and I'm sorry that you're really upset, but I'm kinda getting tired of repeating myself..."

Rika laughed out loud, as if Hanyuu had made some kind of wisecrack remark worthy of being written down for future reference. Assuming they lived that long. "Please, Hanyuu," she said quietly, her tone lacking any of the amusement she seemed to be projecting. "Just...indulge me for a moment. It will keep us sane."

Hanyuu sighed, knowing that her own feelings and perceptions were shared by Rika, and that should one of them snap, so would the other--a risky occurrence, considering their dire situation outside of this particularly miserable world--hence the "us" in her solemn, sober reply. World-hopping would be a lot harder if they were both crazy. They couldn't let this world be the end of them, no matter what happened. There was a happy world out there--they just had to keep fighting it. For all of eternity, it would seem... "Au, I...I guess. Okay...one more time. But then we have to come up with another story, alright? I really don't like this one."

"Me, neither," Rika muttered under her breath.

Hanyuu was unsure if the remark was directed at her, or if she was just talking to herself. Either way, she moved on. "So....this world started like any other. August 12, 1982. It was actually pretty nice, since it gave us a little more time to work, and enjoy ourselves."

"It wasn't nearly as fun without Keiichi around," Rika pointed out. She wasn't sure if Rena had been there or not. It all seemed like a lifetime ago...in the grand scheme of things, she supposed it really didn't matter.

"So...we started around the same place, at the Irie Clinic, unconscious...it's usually what happens. Either we wake up from being asleep or being unconscious from playing ball of some kind. Or that time you fell and hit your head in the bath tub." The remark was intended to make Rika smile, which was why Hanyuu smiled in advance, quickly reversing it when Rika didn't acknowledge the comment. "Um...for a while, it started looking like it was another version of the arc where Tepei Hojo was abusing Sa..." She paused, clearing her throat and forcing back a wave of tears that they both shared in unison. Their senses were linked, after all. "...Satoko. But it was slower. It started earlier, and went on relatively less severely, compared to previous arcs. What _really _seemed out of place was when Dr. Irie called you and called you down to the clinic. Remember?"

"Yes, I remember," Rika replied. "I still want you to go over it, though."

Hanyuu gave an exasperated sigh before continuing with their story. "Well...Dr. Irie called you down to let you know that he thought he had discovered a cure for the Hinamizawa Syndrome. He was really excited about it, too. He said he had already injected Satoshi with a sample to see if it would work. He didn't want to say he was testing it on him, but he was." A lot of good it did--all the testing in the world wouldn't have been able to prepare them for this. "He originally took a small colony of the parasites that infect the host's brain, reverse-engineered them, and basically made an anti-parasite that would target the other parasite and destroy them both. He combined it with the sedative he uses to quell more obvious Hinamizawa Syndrome symptoms for those that were already active with them, and presto--a cure, and a protective agent to keep the clean host from being re-infected. In theory, he could vaccinate the entire village and wipe out the disease in less than a year."

"In theory," Rika muttered, a hint of bitterness to her voice.

Hanyuu nodded sadly. "Au...unfortunately, things didn't go quite right...he doesn't know what happened. We've never been in this particular world before, or seen anything like this, so we don't know, either...but what I think happened is...either he made a mistake while he was reverse-engineering the parasite, or the unstable parasite mutated. Then it went in to track down the other parasite, but instead of destroying it, it _fused_with it. Made it stronger, more...more...deadly. Horrifying." Hanyuu felt a shiver run up her spine, which she wasn't sure was Rika's or just her's. Rika had a neutral expression, staring across her knees as she listened intently to what was being said. It was impossible to read her her thoughts or feelings from this angle. "I don't know how they do it, but...the host gets severe Level 5 symptoms, and basically...kill themselves. The second parasite grows in, or something, and...I don't know how, but...reanimates their bodies....brings them back to life...as m-monsters..." Hanyuu covered her face with her eyes, as if to shield herself with the waves of visions that flooded her mind--a combination of her own nightmares and Rika's. "Please, Rika, no more!" she cried. "Don't make me...don't make me go on! It's too much! I can't take it! I-I can't...I can't do this...anymore..."

Rika remained silent and expressionless, placing a hand on her own shoulder. Though she couldn't actually reach out and touch Hanyuu, their senses were linked, so touching herself would register as touching Hanyuu--everything she felt, Hanyuu did, and vice verse. Rika was her only link to the real world--her only link to any kind of physical feeling. Hanyuu didn't uncover her eyes, but leaned her head over onto her shoulder that Rika was "touching", as if trying to draw out comfort from the affectionate gesture. Rika smiled slightly as she felt the back of her hand warm slightly. "It's alright," she cooed, rubbing "Hanyuu's" shoulder soothingly. "I know it's rough...I would know, since we both feel the same thing, after all." Hanyuu giggled slightly at Rika's intended joke, which served to widen Rika's grin as she felt the other girl's small sense of joy. It was small, _very_small, but it was the first of its kind that she'd felt in...in...she didn't even know how long. It was like tasting a tiny, delicate strawberry after swallowing an unfathomable amount of bitter herbs and concentrated salts for a year. It was tiny, but it was significant. It would likely be able to keep her going for quite some time, just off of that tiny, insignificant little speck of happiness. "We'll find our Perfect World yet, Hanyuu. Don't you worry. We'll beat fate...we'll be happy...but right now, we've got to fight. Even if we are left for dead, doomed for failure...that doesn't mean that we have to sit out here and die quietly."


	2. Necessary 4 Survival

**Chapter 2**

**Necessary 4 Survival**

* * *

Time had slowed to a trickle.

Maybe it was out of spite that Fate forced them all to experience their cruel lives in the slowest manner possible. Or maybe it was just because Rika's time-perception part of the brain finally gave way under the pressure. It didn't really matter--either way, the very act of living became the very definition of a "slow, painful death."

Cooped up inside a shrine loaded with god-only-knows how many kinds of cruel torture from ages long since passed wasn't on the top of anyone's want list, but it was shelter, and it beat the hell out of spending the night out with the zombies, as everyone had decidedly referred to them as. They seemed to fit the bill--mindless, generated from corpses, seemed to have a thing for living flesh--and, by the smell of things outside, they were decaying. A lot. It was a miracle that any of them were able to stand on two feet, let alone stagger mindlessly around in indeterminate directions. The shrine was cramped, creepy, and dark, but they didn't have the luxury of choosing a shelter, and this one seemed to be alright. It had boxes of supplies that likely hadn't been touched in years, which would be enough to keep them alive until help came.

Assuming help came, that is.

Everyone seemed to manage somewhat well. They were all quiet, of course, occasionally throwing out things for them to nervously laugh at, but for the most part things were quite peaceful. Occassionally Shion would snap from the sheer stress of it all, fiery temper heaving up and unleashing on everyone around her, but eventually that became redundant and nobody even noticed. If it was her way of dealing with things, so be it. It wasn't like it mattered--hurt feelings were the least of their worries, at the moment.

Keiichi and Rena seemed to be clinging to each other for support as the days passed. At first it was just when Rena was feeling overwhelmed or went into a panic-attack, when Keiichi would comfort her and get her to calm down, glaring at Shion for not doing anything about it. Perhaps Rika ought to as well, but she was completely mentally exhausted--she could barely comfort Hanyuu, and they shared the same head. As time passed, it became more and more apparent that Rena found Keiichi to be warm and comforting, falling back to him more frequently until she simply never left his side, lightly leaning on him or hanging off of his arm. Keiichi didn't seem to mind, rather he enjoyed the feeling of making her smile and feel secure--that, even after all that had happened and how small he seemed to be, he could still make a difference to someone. When she didn't approach him, he approached her--either way, neither of them were found even a foot apart from each other, always within arm's reach of a comforting embrace. It was heart-warming to watch the two smile contently in each other's company.

Keiichi and Rena had each other for comfort. Shion had her temper to vent off steam frequently, using her callousness to keep the pressure from building up too high. But for Rika, no such luxury was offered.

More and more Rika found herself talking out loud about meaningless things, and more and more she began to realize that she didn't even think about whether Hanyuu would listen, let alone care. The nights were grueling by nature--sitting alone in the dark while listening to the absent groans and grumbles of the creatures outside as they stalked around for the fresh meat of ones they would otherwise call friends or loved ones wasn't exactly a gleeful experience--but Rika found them to be especially unpleasant, feeling more often than not a sense of dread as the light from outside began to dim. The racks of sharp, protruding items of malice began to look more and more like outstretched claws, reaching for her and shredding the night. The shadows themselves began to become potentially hostile, and Rika spent the nights in the Furude Shrine tucked away in a corner, dilated eyes darting rapidly between this darkness and that tool rack with no source of focus or direction in mind--everything all around her could hide a creature hiding in wait.

Perhaps even worse than the sleepless nights were the ones where, because of the sheer exhaustion plaguing her frail child-like body, she fell into a state of unconsciousness no more refreshing than being awake. During these periods of involuntary rest, Rika was forced under into a wretched dreamland of unspeakable terrors and indescribable dread--the worst nightmares she could ever remember having. They were even worse with the fact that she couldn't awaken from them like she normally could--she seemed to experience them in real-time, perhaps even slower, and could not willingly force herself awake, as her state of unconsciousness wasn't sleep. Her body was simply too tired to function, and fell dormant, plunging her into some of the worst dreams she could imagine.

Not only were the days plagued with exhaustion and the anxiety of being cramped in a shed-sized building surrounded by the living dead, but with double the stress--Hanyuu, though incapable of interacting with the world around them, was fully capable of experiencing and feeling everything a normal person could, sharing these feelings with the one person she could connect to: Rika. Rika was cursed with what had otherwise been a blessing in the past of sharing feelings--every bit of pain, stress, and anxiety Hanyuu felt, Rika did as well. Literally, Rika was feeling the mental and emotional strain of two people. In that light, perhaps it was only natural that Rika began to fall apart, at least on a subconscious psychological level.

Rika began finding herself experiencing increasing levels of hyper-arousal--jumping and flinching at just about every audible noise without an immediate visual source, the fact that she couldn't bring herself to sleep until she literally passed out from exhaustion, and the feeling of constant distress; Rika could not allow herself to relax or calm down for a moment, always on edge, ready to run or fight for her life, if need be. This would be a good reaction to have if she wasn't feeling it all day every day.

Rika had begun feeling emotionally numb quite early on, and had dismissed it quickly as being from the shock, but now that days had begun to pass, both she and Hanyuu began to worry. She was unable to remember the initial incident that had begun all of this, despite the amount of effort she had put in to assure that she remembered and had it readily at hand. She was always plagued by worry and anxiety, beginning to doubt just about everything around her--at one point, Rika had seriously debated whether or not Hanyuu was actually there, or if she was just imagining a voice of someone she thought she knew. Despite Hanyuu's distraught protests and attempts to convince Rika she was real, Rika had given up on it, more because she was simply too tired to dwell on anything than because she trusted her friend. On more than one occasion Rika would begin to feel incredibly angry and frustrated, snapping and lashing out at things, sometimes with no cause or source. She found it a little strange that, despite her emotional detachment, she was so receptive to anger. _Maybe that's why Shion uses it for relief...is it Shion? Or is it just Mion in disguise, not wanting to admit her sister is dead? Oh, who cares? Shion, Mion...it's not like it matters. We're just as dead either way._

It felt like years had gone by before someone finally brought up the point that they were out of supplies. No food, no water, and no way to replace it. They were stuck in here, and there was no way they could survive without it. They were trapped, surrounded by zombies, out of food and water, and hope that help would arrive had finally been abandoned.

Someone debated with...someone...it was beginning to get harder and harder to focus, and Rika just gave up on it, not even lifting her head from her spot in the corner when people began discussing their next move. They couldn't stay here. Therefore, they needed to act.

"All I'm saying is...why don't we go and find some more supplies? There's bound to be a store we can go to, maybe right over in Okinomiya."

"Okinomiya! Are you out of your _mind_?! That's the next town! God only knows how many of those things are out there! We won't survive out there!"

"We can't survive in here, either. We're dead for sure if we stay, but there's a chance we'll make it if we leave. We can fortify a store or something--root in, wait for help to get here-"

"_Wait?_ Wait, wait, just keep on waiting...for what? Hell to freeze over? Face it, Keiichi--there _is_ no help. Nobody's coming. It's just you, me, Rena, and Rika, if she's even alive over there...oh, well, I guess she's breathing, so.."

"Um, Rena thinks maybe, instead of waiting, that we should call for help. Maybe they don't know anyone's left out here...isn't it a good idea that we let them know? Isn't it?"

"Maybe. If you overlook the fact that we don't have any weapons-"

"Not true. You've got your gun, and look at all this stuff! We've got tons of weapons. Enough for an army, even!"

"That's great, but we don't know what we're dealing with here! The living dead? Jesus, Keiichi, we don't even know what they actually are, let alone what they're capable of!"

"Maybe, but we know enough to kill one of them--go for the head! They're zombies, right? Even if they aren't, the head should do the trick."

"We don't know that for sure."

"No? Well, let's see. Give me that gun for a moment."

"...fine, whatever. Just give it back after."

"Thanks." Rika heard footsteps drift to her left, the creaking of a door as it opened slightly, and silence. It was a while before the ear-splitting bang of an AK-47 rang cut through the silence like a sledgehammer, making Rika's ears ring and her heart kick. There was a light gagging noise outside, another explosive bang, and the door closed. "There, see? You can kill 'em. You don't even need to hit their heads."

"Wow, really?"

"Yep. A bullet anywhere looks good to put one down."

"Good job, Keiichi-kun! This is lotsa help--it is!"

"Yeah, yeah...well...I guess, if we can kill them, and we can't stay...but...I don't know, Kei-chan. It's not safe."

"Neither's sitting here."

"Point...alright. Fine. But what do we do about weapons? These things are nice for like clubs and knives, but I'd rather kill these things _before_ they get close enough to reach out and touch."

"Well, uh..."

"We could always go up to the Sonozaki estate and get some weapons there. Doesn't that estate have an armory or something, Shii-chan?"

"I think so. I think there was a weapon's block built in for the dam war, when things looked like they were going to get hot. Can we make it to the Sonozaki estate, though? We've got one gun and whatever we can carry here. Is that enough?"

"Dunno. I guess there's only one way to find out."

"Alright, then that's it, then. Everyone, get some stuff for killing. Rena, you still got that cleaver from before?"

"Uh-huh."

"Good. Kei-chan, find something nice and nasty to bust some zombie heads."

"Music to my ears. It's about time we get out there and start killing some of those bastards...make them pay for what they did."

"Good enthusiasm! Oh, and someone wake up Rika...oh?"

Rika chose this time to stand, ignoring the creaking of her spine and dull pains created from sitting in one spot for nearly a full day. She rubbed her eyes, removing the crusty-crap from her vision, and blinked, eyes adjusting to the light.

Shion stood with her hands on her hips while Rena and Keiichi dug through the arcane tools of torture all aroudn them. "Glad you're awake," Shion said. "I was starting to think maybe you were dead. So, the deal is-"

"I heard," Rika cut in, slightly unnerved by the lifelessness of her own voice. It felt like she was listening to her own corpse speak for her. _In this world, that doesn't sound that outrageous..._

"Oh, uh, okay then." Shion shifted slightly, wondering just how long this girl had been awake while sitting there in a daze, if she ever slept at all. Combined with the talking to herself, Rika was starting to creep Shion out. "Well, go ahead and get a weapon, and we'll get this show on th-"

"Fine." Rika didn't even care if she was being rude--it didn't matter. Hell, what _did_ matter? They were going to die anyway. She wasn't even sure why she was going anywhere, except for maybe the natural instinct to not accept sitting by and waiting for death to arrive, even if it was immenant. Rika wandered over to the back of the rows of tools and gangly tools of ritualistic death and pain, sifting through the grotesque selection of death to the very back, where there was a little mini-alter/rack specially designed for one tool in particular: the ceremonial hoe used for the cotton drifting festival--a most sacred tool, only to be used and touched for what it was designed for. The holy tool of sacrifice resembled the festive-equivalent of the common garden tool--a blade on the end of a long pole, several symbols and a bell hanging around near the end. The blade was especially unique--custom-made and feathery in appearance, as if in recognition that it was to be used for the appeal of a god. Combined with the hand-sewn priestess outfit, the appearance of importance and godly significance was quite apparent. Normally, touching it, let alone using it for a purpose other than the ceremony, would be an unspeakable sin--one punishable by death, though no one would admit it aloud. As the heir of the Furude family, Rika was allowed exclusive access into the shrine, but she was never to touch that tool unless it was for its intended purposes.

"Times have changed," Rika said aloud, carefully lifting up the hoe off its rack as a horrified Hanyuu stared at her in abhorrence. "And so have our goals." In the world-jumping of their most recent past, Rika had practiced for the wielding of the hoe with a mallet for pounding mochi, which she had found to be of accurate proportions and weight of the hoe she was to use. She had long-since learned to wield the tool in ceremony, down to her first world, where she had so zealously practiced with the idea that she was to do her very best in mind. Since then, her practicing had been more along the lines of self-defense--swinging and twisting the tool as a weapon should the need arise, rather than to keep sharp with her cotton drifting act. _Times simply changed; and with them, our goals._

The simple, solemn statement was enough to silence Hanyuu as intended and keep whatever she was about to say to herself, though she was no less incredulous to the lengths Rika was willing to go to fight fate. _Although, she never really was one for honoring religions and traditions...the only reason she did cotton-drifting festival at all was because the whole village expected her to. It's not very honorable._ Hanyuu blinked. _Is...is it because she feels that...I don't deserve to be honored...for what I've done? For sending us into this Labyrinth? Is her lack of interest in honoring "Oyashiro-sama"...in spite of me? Is this her subtle payback for doing this to her..?_

Hanyuu's thoughts were interrupted as Rika turned on her heel, hefting the hoe on her shoulder, and walked straight through Hanyuu as if she wasn't even there...which, in reality, she wasn't. _Even to Rika, I'll never be anything more than a ghost...unworthy of being honored or remembered._

Eventually, everyone drifted to the door, waiting anxiously for someone to head out first. Rika wielded her ceremonial hoe, which no one objected to, if they had any problems with it--perhaps, like her, they knew that survival was simply more important than tradition. Rena had her three foot-long cleaver she used to dig out "treasure" at the junkyard where the dam construction site used to be. It was sharp enough to cut through wood and debris, so flesh and bone was likely to fall victim as well. Keiichi had found and now wielded what resembled a large pick, probably designed with skewering bone and tissue in mind. _Good--something cut out for killing. We'll need that._ Loyal to her first choice, Shion stuck with the large frame of her AK-47, more than capable of how to use such a loud, powerful weapon.

And, there they stood, all staring at the door anxiously, none willing to take the first step out into the yawning void. The sun wasn't up yet--either it was too early or too late for that, it was hard to tell which. Occasionally, the form of a stumbling, staggering body moved past the gap between the floor and the door, blocking out the sliver of light with its presence, continuing onward in a daze, completely unaware of the force that was about to storm through the door. An eerie silence ensured, bar the occasional mumble or groan of the creatures outside, as if urging them to come forward--to take that first step.

Finally, numbly, Rika took that first, arduous step forward, hand on the knob to open the door. "You've already lost hope, haven't you?" she asked aloud, seemingly to no one.

Keiichi, Rena and Shion looked at each other, wondering who she was referring to, when in reality she was talking to no one--the no one that had followed her, guiding her through these last worlds without an audible word or touch. Hanyuu, who stood behind the three others as if trying to hide from them--not that they'd see her anyhow--wiped the hot tears that defiantly rolled down her cheek, using her robes to vainly hide her shame and fear. "I'm sorry," she whispered, as if trying to be unnoticed by the people that had no idea she existed. Over and over again, she'd apologized--sometimes to Rika, sometimes to her friends, sometimes to the world--when all hope had been lost. When all light had gone out, and she knew that it was only a matter of time before Fate claimed them once again, as it had a thousand times before. She had apologized, and apologized, and cried and wept endlessly, as if begging someone--any of the people out there that couldn't see her--to somehow forgive her. It was her fault this had happened--that the endless June was claiming them. She had apologized then, and she apologized now, apologizing, begging mirthfully for forgiveness for what was about to ensue--for what was, without a doubt, her fault. "I'm sorry...I'm sorry....I'm sorry...I'm sorry..."

Rika found herself smiling--whether because it was ironic, or because she had someone's pain to look down on, distant, making herself feel just a little bit more secure. At least, it would be the case, if she couldn't feel and taste every tear that escaped Hanyuu's wiping and pooled onto her lips. She felt every moment of grief, every bit of hopelessness...but somehow found the strength to smile. She always gave up hope--threw in the towel before the end of the game had played through. It was that attitude that had begun this mess in the first place. _And it's that attitude that's going to ensure taht we never escape the Labyrinth._ "Watch, then," she said, hand gripping the handle of the door. "Watch now as we struggle against Fate."

Then door was flung open, and the four Survivors charged head-first into the nightmare before them.

_Watch now as we find the strength that you abandoned._


	3. The Sonozaki Estate

**Chapter 3**

**The Sonozaki Estate**

* * *

It started out all according to plan. So easy--the door burst open. The night was shattered by a dozen bursts of sound--an AK-47 firing, to be specific. The four infected staggering around the Furude Shrine stairs died instantly. The bullets entered their bodies; the life left them in return. They could be killed, and they could be beaten. They could be defeated.

There could be hope.

As they started off towards the Sonozaki estate, it became evident that things were going to get relatively difficult relatively soon. As one infected turned to attack, another turned its head to see what the attention was about, which in turn attracted the attention of the other, then the next...within time, the local area was alerted to their presence, and there was little choice but to engage them all--they couldn't outrun them, and they already had their scent. If they didn't kill them, they'd bring more, and more, and then...

So, they had to kill every infected that saw them, which always attacked them upon sight. Attempts of contact were fruitless--Rikawasn't surprised. She could tell by looking in their eyes--the bulging, lifeless eyes--that whatever humanity that was present before had long-since been forsaken, replaced with an animalistic anger and hunger. Whether or not these creatures ate humans, ate their brains exclusively as the cliche zombie persona dictated, or if they were only supposed to be killed to spread the infection, Rika wasn't sure. At this point in time, she really, really wasn't interested in finding out.

The trip up the hill to which the Sonozaki estate took longer than originally thought. Turns out, the infected were unusually difficult to spot in the trees, and attacks from such came suddenly and without warning. Fortunately, the ambushes were generally from one or two individual infected, and were often put down by AK-47 shots without incident. At the rate things were going, though, Rika suspected that if this kept up, they wouldn't know it when they stumbled across a really big group.

They wouldn't see them coming, because they'd already be dead.

Apart from the infected staggering around on the hill that led up to the estate and the ones that were in the trees close enough to catch their presence, there was nothing there. No people; only the ruined and/or abandoned cars that littered the street. It started easy enough, but the trek itself--the feet of climbing up a hill steeper than Rikaremembered, which wouldn't have been so bad, except for the fact that she was physically exhausted and completely drained of energy--was proving harder and harder as time went on. Rika willed herself forward, as she had no choice but to go on, but her exhaustion quickly overcame her sheer willpower, and her breaths became hard and ragged, gasping for breath within half an hour of their original departure. _Pitiful. I haven't even had to run, and look at me now. Pitiful. Absolutely pitiful._

"You can do it, Rika," Hanyuu urged, floating not an inch behind her companion, desperately wishing she could reach out and offer a shoulder for her to sag into. "Just keep going, Rika. You're almost there!"

"Can't," Rika gasped, slowly doubling over as she stepped forward. "Gotta...stop...have to...hah..." Finally, Rika couldn't support her own weight and collapsed, falling to her knees, lungs aflame as they ravaged her bloodstream for oxygen. She shook her head, opening her mouth to let the thick, frothy saliva ooze into the dirt, coughing occasionally. She felt like crap.

She must have looked it, too, because someone was instantly as her side. Rikacouldn'tmuster up the strength to turn her head, eyes drifting over to the person's hands, determining by the blue bracelets that this person was Rena. "Rika-chan! Are you too tired? Do you need to rest? Do you?"

Rika was half a mind to give some kind of short and snappish remark, sarcastically informing her that _"No, I love sitting here on my hands and knees gasping for air. I'm having the time of my fucking life. YES, I need rest!!" _Exhaustion, however, stripped her of what little capacity to smart comments and left her with no other reply than the nodding of her head, unable to gather enough air between pants to speak properly. Hanyuu, now ashamed that she'd been pushing her friend too far, hung her head. It was sometimes a good thing that no one could see her.

Shion, having no trouble of her own, hefted her gunonher shoulder, taking this time to both roll her eyes and change magazines, reloading the weapon with practiced efficiency. "Wuss. We can't stop now. Just...carry her, or something."

Keiichi punched her shoulder, muttering "asshole" as Rena carefully reached to pick Rika up off the ground, only to have her hand swatted away. "Wait," Rika gasped with as much malice as she could muster, only proceeding in sounding well and truly worn out. "Give me...a...minute..."

Rena looked unsure, but did as she was told, running a hand up and down Rika's back in a comforting manner. Rika, though cursing herself for her weakness, found herself leaning into Rena's warm and sturdy form, resting her head on her thigh. It was grueling to admit when one was trying to put up a facade of strength, but Rika truly appreciated the gesture, both her and Hanyuu's eyes closed as they embraced the comfort. It felt like it had been an eternity since this all started...going it all alone, Rika was a lone wolf by nature. She couldn't afford to get too attached to anyone--there was a good chance in each world that they would be lost, as they had been all the times before, but in her exhausted state, Rika was simply too tired to keep distancing herself, taking her moment of weakness as a chance to absorb all of the comfort she had been without for so long as she could. She hated it, but couldn't force herself out of it. _She's very kind,_Rika found herself thinking. _Such a big heart, she has. That's never changed, but funny how it takes me until I'm falling apart to come to terms with it...it's almost a shame we never had a moment like this before. When she's not trying to take me home with her, Rena's actually...quite lovable..._

As the first few minutes went by, Shion listened to Rika's gasping for a while before she frowned, pacing back and forth. She began muttering to herself as time went on and her impatience increased, glancing around at the trees nervously, waiting for an infected to suddenly burst out and charge insanely out into the open. Deciding maybe if it was better that she sit down and keep watch, Shion eyed one of the hastily parked cars to her right, noting how it was a good vantage point, sat down on the hood-

-and set off the car alarm.

Rika's heart suddenly rattled about in her chest in panic as Keiichi barked out "You fucking moron!", Rena anxiously rising off the ground. Taking what rest she could, Rika got up onto her knees, clutching the ceremonial wantagashi hoe tightly as her eyes darted from this tree to the next, not even noticing the pain that the sharp blaring car horn left in her ears as it rang out into the night. Shion, who had been hastily barging into the car's interior, finally found what she had been looking for and shot it with her AK, abruptly silencing the errant car alarm.

No sooner did the siren end was the silence shattered by a distant, roaring chorus of snarls and growls, rolling across the landscape like a tidal wave of dread.

Shion gulped, realizing how fatal her small error could be. She had a frightened look on her face as she slapped her gun's clip to ensure it was tightly in place. "Sh-shit...."

The group quickly bunched together, holding their weapons at the ready as they all gathered back-to-back, ready for the worst. The eerie silence that came was perhaps even worse than the car alarm, or that distant howling--they had no idea where to expect danger. For what felt like an eternity, they all stood silently, shifting in place and eying their surroundings nervously, waiting for the impending attack-

"There!" Rena blurted, jabbing a finger down where they had come--a small group of infected were coming around the bend, charging and snarling with as much vigor and enthusiasm as a desperate, vicious dog pack. Just as quickly, Shion aimed her AK-47 and opened up on them, firing in short, controlled bursts as the infected approached. Individual ones staggered, flopped face-first, and died. As the first group was put down, another group--this one massive, filling up the entire width of the street--began their charge, replacing the one before them.

"Back up!" Shion cried, unloading full-auto on the horde before them. Keiichi, Rena and Rika were quick to agree, taking quick steps back as Shion slowly stepped back and widled away at the horde's front lines. She cursed as her clip ran dry, quickly pulling out a new one to slap into place.

By the time she raised her gun, the horde was on them.

When Rika first swung her hoe, she was expecting to hit sturdy, solid resistance when she struck her target. Instead, she barely felt the hoe's blade make contact as a trio of legs clattered to the ground, followed by their previous owners. Dark, congealing blood sprayed out like through a fire hose nozzle, speckling Rika's small green dress and dripping gore into her mouth, filling her senses with a repulsive, coppery taste. She ignored it--she had to. Where her previous targets once stood, a teeming wall of decrepit corpses and snarling monsters rolled in to replace them.

Rika swallowed the blood in her mouth and swung again.

Exactly how much time passed and how many creatures fell to her, she couldn't tell. She'd lost orientation some time ago, terrified brain quickly switching to survival-mode as she fought for her life, ignoring the kicks and blows that sporadically landed across her frail form. She swung her ancient weapon--body parts were severed, flesh was parted, blood was sprayed. Another wall of enemies came forth to replace them. And so the process went about again; Rika fought, enemies died, more came to replace them. With no sense of time, direction, or thought, Rika swung and twirled and spunherhoe as if her entire purpose for living was to fight with it. Everything was a blur of red, mottled grays and pale whites--Rika's heart pounded in her chest like a gattling gun, threatening to smash through her ribs and leap out of her chest to join the fray itself. Rika couldn't tell where she was going, or what she was screaming, if anything--all she could see, all she could hear, all she could think about was fighting. Fighting; killing; dismembering; goring; slicing; wounding. This was Rika--this was all she knew at that place and time. These things were all that made up Rika Furude.

How much time passed, Rika wasn't sure. When the bodies were finally done being thrown at her, it must have taken a while longer for her to come to her senses--she found herself running, full-tilt, with no sense of direction or destination in mind. She ran, and ran, and ran...until a thought finally passed through her head: _Is it over?_

Rika stopped, finally feeling the fire that raged through her legs, the sickly warm fluid that oozed down her skin, matted her hair, dampened her clothes. She stood there for a moment, feeling the pain and disgusting wetness, finally coming to the conclusion that, based on her senses, she was alive. The gore-drenched wantagashi hoe in her hand felt a thousand times heavier as her fight-or-flight response died away, falling to her knees as exhaustion took hold of her, leaning forward to puke from the sensory overload, only to realize that there was nothing in her stomach to forcibly eject, only proceeding to dry-heave and drip frothy saliva onto the dirt below her. She kept at this until she finally ceased attempting to vomit, her stomach muscles cramping, a cold film of sweat and drying blood forming all over her body as she stared at the ground with wild eyes, as if trying to drill a hole through it with looks alone. She sat there, quavering on her hands and knees as hot tears of terror and desperation rolled freely down her face, feeling more alone than ever before. She didn't know where she was--Hanyuu was silent, her friends weren't there, and there she sat, in the middle of the road in a forest in a valley that she had once called her home, fighting for her life against a teeming horde of monsters that she once knew as her friends. She could clearly recognize every single face that she'd seen--she couldn't remember them when she thought about it, but she knew that she'd seen a thousand faces of Hinamizawa citizens that she'd seen a million times before in her world-jumping. She recognized every person that had come charging at her, flailing their limbs and snarling their teeth, craving for blood and death. She'd seen each of their faces before, and could place them easily.

_And I just killed every single one of them._

Rika was no stranger to violence--in the countless worlds before this, she had bared witness to a grotesque spectacle of cruel and unusual torture, her own deaths enough to callous over her conscience and harden her for the future. She had killed people before, too--she could remember quite clearly what it felt like as a man's life drifted out between her fingers, blood drenching her body as she watched the light fade from their eyes. She had grown quite used to the act of death, and what it meant to kill. But this...this was something else entirely.

The people that killed her and the people she killed were evil--well and truly corrupt, deserving of the cold hand of death and damnation. The ones she'd killed, she had no heart for. They had either deserved to die, or were already on the road to death on their own. She either killed for justice, or in mercy. She had no regrets for the lives claimed by her hand.

But this...all those people. All those faces...people she had no quarrel with, that had lives of their own prior to this...the people that she had spent her lives together with, side by side, never giving more hostile than a smile or a pleasant greeting...what had they become? What had happened that turned people--men and women with dreams, hopes, fears, and lives--into raging, mindless monsters? She knew their faces, their names, where they lived, how they behaved, what they said. All the good things that had been done for her, were done by them. These were the people that she had lived beside for so long, and the people that she knew she would live beside for years to come. _I...killed them...with my own hand, I...killed everyone...I killed them all. I killed them..they're dead, and by my hand..._

Whether it was a hundred or a thousand, the number didn't matter--Rika Furude had just butchered the innocent men and women of Hinamizawa.

Rika screamed, ignoring the protests from her lungs that she needed to savor this precious air. She grabbed her hoe and flung it as far as she could...which wasn't far, considering how weak she was and how much it weighed. In a fit of crazed anger, Rika pounded her fist into the ground, further enraged by the fact that she left no mark and hurt herself, unleashing a barrage of futile punches in a crazed frenzy. "Damn it!" she screamed, not caring if she attracted more of the creatures with her fuming. "Damn it, damn it, damn it, damn it, _damn it!!!" _Rearing back and directing her rage to the sky, Rika screamed **"DAMN IT!!!" **as loud and long as her ravaged lungs would allow before collapsing back onto her hands and knees, crying and sobbing uncontrollably as her body screamed for rest, oxygen, and solace. The latter was slow to come, but the others were cruelly denied--whether by Rika or by Fate, it didn't matter anymore. Nothing mattered. Absolutely nothing.

Pressing her face into her bloodied, sweat-drenched hands, Rika squeezed her eyes shut, cursed everything and anything, and sobbed.

How long she sat there lamenting, she wasn't sure. Nor did she care--at that particular time and place, nothing mattered, and she didn't care. Eventually, Rika's hands dropped away, wincing from the pain of her bloodied and torn knuckles colliding with the dirt, and opened her eyes, breaking through the film of dried tears that had nearly glued her eyes closed. She saw the ceremonial sandals and flowing, colorful robe, combining the odd apparel with the fact that this person was transparent before coming to the conclusion that Hanyuu was standing before her, pinching her eyes closed. "I can't do this," Rika gasped, the dry sobs continuing to flow though the tears had long since stopped. "I ca- I can't...d-do this...all the- all these- these...people...I-I-I, I...killed them...I...no, n- I can't...no..." Losing her resolve to continue, Rika released all of her muscles and pressed her face into the dirt, as if hoping that the rocks and gravel digging into her skin would somehow benefit her in some way.

Hanyuu felt terrible sorrow at the sight of seeing her best and only friend having a nervous breakdown, covered in dried blood and sweat, wondering curiously why she, too, wasn't falling apart. Perhaps, in her hysterical emotional overload, the connection between their senses was momentarily broken or blocked from the sensory overload, and that--for a little while--their senses were their own. Hanyuu was a little relieved at the timing--there had to be at least one of them able to function here. Besides...judging by her state, it was a relief that Hanyuu was spared the experience. Hanyuu lowered down to her knees, though in reality she was simply hovering in place to look as though she was sitting beside her--physical barriers meant nothing to a ghost like her. To nothing. "It's okay, Rika," Hanyuu cooed, desperately wishing for the umpteenth time that she could reach out and touch her friend to offer support. "They're not...they're not who you know anymore. They aren't people. They just look like it."

Rika didn't at all seem comforted by this, continuing her dry sobs into the dirt. The pain from doing so, compared to what she was feeling inside, was like a cool washcloth to the face.

"Please, Rika, don't give up on me now," Hanyuu pleaded. "You're so close. Look, I can see the estate from here! Just a little further, Rika. Just a little-"

"W-what's th-the point?" Rika gasped, seemingly to no one, if anyone were to see her. From the outside, it would look as though she had well and truly lost it. "W-w-what is- is there to g- go on f-for?" Rika paused a moment, taking in oxygen to feed her burning lungs. Her trachea felt like it was made of sandpaper. "Th-this- this world...so much is- all wrong...this place is Hell...this whole- this godda- damn place is _fucking Hell!!"_

Hanyuu visibly winced at Rika's exclamation, not accustomed to hearing her use such language. She didn't say anything about it--the situation was bad enough without her nagging about talking nicely. "Rika...don't give up. This world might be lost...but...we still have to keep fighting. You said it yourself: we have to keep fighting. We'll never defeat Fate if we sit down and wait for death. I..." Hanyuu swallowed, feeling disgusted with how useless she was. "...I wish I could be there with you...for real. Be there, help you keep on fighting...keep trying...please, Rika, for the both of us...you've got to keep going. You can't give up. That's exactly what...Fate would want you to do."

Rika winced at hearing her enemy's name--_Fate_--but knew that Hanyuu was right. She was never supposed to be here. She was never supposed to put up a fight by entering another world. She was supposed to be dead and gone, pried open and pulled inside-out alive, and that was supposed to be the end of it. Fate never wanted her to fight. Fate wanted her to die and stay dead. Fate wanted her to quit.

This was exactly what Fate wanted her to feel like.

From where Hanyuu was standing, she couldn't tell at all what Rika was feeling, and with their senses blocked, she couldn't tell how she felt--if she'd said something wrong or not. Seeing how defenseless her friend was, Hanyuu turned about slightly and eyed their surroundings, watching the scene that she could have no part of for the sake of her friend. There was no movement...but if they stayed here much longer, that could change. They had to find the others. They couldn't do this alone--they had to find their friends. Hanyuu was about to say something further when Rika abruptly stood up, noticing how her legs shook so forcibly beneath her weight. As she went over numbly to pick up her discarded hoe, the blockage between their senses suddenly burst, allowing the flood of anxiety, desperation, and hysterical sorrow flood Hanyuu's mind, hitting her all at once like a mental sledgehammer. She gave a little gasp at the sudden overload of feelings--she would have fallen to her knees, if gravity had any affect on her, and if she could touch the ground. She floated there for a moment, eyes dilated, watching the surge of indescribable feelings course through her that had, not a moment ago, coursed through Rika. They were united again--their senses linked, their feelings shared. In many ways, they were now the same person. Normally, this would be a moment of elation for Hanyuu.

For the moment, though, she was floored. If she could physically touch said structure without ghosting through it like nothing.

When she came to her senses, Hanyuu saw Rika's face and gasped--the dirt, dried blood and tears, scratches, and red eyes was a frightening thing to suddenly wake up and find staring you in the face. Hanyuu drifted back slightly in surprise, noting how Rika was...grinning. It was a dry sort of humor, more sarcastic than anything, but a grin was a grin. "That bad, huh?"

Hanyuu hesitated--she wasn't sure if Rika said that with the intent of receiving a response, because if she did then she was going to be disappointed. Hanyuu, stunned and still swirling wtih the emotions that Rika was feeling--which Hanyuu was surprised she could smile through, even if it was fake--she was simply unsure of what to say, if she was even capable of speech at this point. _I feel like I just watched a puppy die..._

Instead of waiting for a response--for which Hanyuu was grateful--Rika just shook her head, sliding the stick of the wantagashi hoe down her back beneath her dress, creating a makeshift harness for it. The condition of the ceremonial tool absolutely horrified Hanyuu--were she not the guardian deity herself, Rika would surely be damned for eternity for the gore-dried and worn condition of the sacred wantagashi sacrificial tool. The chief of the village would have her head...if he wasn't already after its contents. _Brain-eating monsters...that's all they are_, Hanyuu reminded herself, drifting closely behind Rika as she staggered up the hill to the large, luxurious house at the top._They're just a bunch of monsters...that look like people. That's it. That's all they are...that's all...it's all that remains of Hinamizawa. _

_All that's left of our home...is monsters._

* * *

Rika arrived at the Sonozaki estate and entered to find Shion, Keiichi, and Rena all anxiously standing about, apparently waiting for her return. Shion, who had been fervently pacing back and forth, was on her in an instant, unsure of whether to hug Rika or slap her. She finally decided to simply stand there and act motherly. "Where have you _been?!_Do you have any idea how long we've been waiting here?! What the hell- geezus, you look like shit!"

"Nice to see you, too," Rika mumbled, an instant before Rena pounced. At first, she thought Rena was in "adowable mode," but then realized the hug was from joy, and that...she was...crying? "Oh my god oh my god, Rika! We were so worried- I was going to go out looking, but they- we couldn't- oohhh, Rikaaaaa!"

Rika was caught off guard by the sudden embrace, hesitantly returning the gesture, as if expecting it to be some kind of trick. _They were...that worried, then..._

Keiichi chuckled, placing a hand on Rika's shoulder. "Aw, I knew you'd be alright. I told em you'd be fine, but they wouldn't listen. Nice, huh?" Though Keiichi jokingly put up a facade of expectancy and lack of worry, it was clear on his face that he, too, was grateful that she had made it back.

"I'm so glad," Rena sniffled, hugging Rika closer to her. "I-I thought- Rena was worried that she...l-lost you, too..."

Rika paused, mind filling with the warm, smiling face of her best friend, Satoko--the little scamp, her. Always playing tricks on Keiichi, getting up extra early and dragging her along just so she could snare her friends in yet another one of her traps. The happy, smiling features turned to an expression of dread and pain, and Rika once again relived the moment that she saw the light fade from her eyes...the bloody, snarling teeth of her uncle Teppei digging deep into her jugular...Rena had been right there, and Mion, too. The three of them had gone up to Satoko's uncle's house to see if they could help them, as the infection had only just been unleashed. Rika remembered opening the door, seeing Satoko's delighted face, which slowly melted into one of pain as she realized her uncle was infected and tearing her throat out...in their hasty retreat, Mion had also fallen victim to the swarm that had come in response to Rena's screams... It seemed as though Rena stilled blamed herself for that. _Kind, caring Rena...sparing others the blame by placing it on herself...if only she learned that she didn't have to bear that guilt..._

Eventually the hug was broken, and Rika pulled the wantagashi hoe off of her back, which had a raw spot where the handle had been digging into it. Naturally, everyone looked horrified at the defiled sacred tool. While they were grateful to see Rika alive and well, to see her having committed such a sin...the very thought...

Rika, noting how Hanyuu's expression cloned her friends', rolled her eyes and carelessly tossed the heavy sacrificial weapon to the floor, leaving little red stains where it hit the floor as it bounced, as if marking Rika's vile sins. "Times have changed," Rika said nonchalantly. "So have our goals. If Oyashiro-sama doesn't understand, then I don't think she's a god worthy of much praise." Though she seemed to be absently looking at her friends, her eyes were locked dead onto Hanyuu as she spoke. Hanyuu sighed, hung her head, and said nothing, fading out of Rika's awareness. Her focus drifted to her friends, who seemed to have come to an understanding, albeit a grim one. "Now, can I please have a gun? I'm tired of having zombies in my face before I can kill them."

Shion, while a bit skeptical and incredulous of this sudden action-craving attitude, shook her head and complied, leading the way to the armory hidden in the estate's basement. Somewhere on the way down, the smooth, decorative walls and floors turned to rugged, rough rock. Shion didn't pay any heed to it--she already came here, and already knew. It wasn't important. Her familiarity with the estate did not, however, prevent her from staring as she passed mounds of dead and rotting corpses; the gore and decay of the people who lived here. _I don't suppose Grandmother or Mother made it out alive, either..._ She considered stopping to see if she could find them, but discarded the thought and moved on. They had enough going on to bother with that.

The armory looked just like it sounded like: an armory. Rows of guns, armor, emergency supplies, and ancient weapons of old were hooked, strapped, or laying on racks for the entire length of the room. The others were floored by the amount of firepower they saw--all right under the floor of a family's home! "A candy store for adults," Shion said aloud, rubbing her hands together as she browsed the shelves for one that struck her fancy. The AK-47 she had was good, but there was always a bigger fish.... "Take a look around, see if you find something that just calls out to ya'."

Rika and Keiichi didn't hesitate to take up the offer, but Rena stood in the doorway, looking unsure. "Um," she protested meekly. "W-we're just children...I don't think we should be touching these..."

"Oh, please," Shion groaned, picking up a rather large camo-design battle rifle of a caliber she was unsure of. "Things are a little desperate right now, so...desperate times call for desperate measures, and all that."

"Sounds good to me," Keiichirepliedhappily, resting the barrels of a combat shotgun on each shoulder. He truly did look like a child in a candy store.

_A candy store for adults,_Rika corrected herself with a grin all her own, picking up the largest handgun she'd ever seen--bright and shiny, plated in silver plating, a flashlight already strapped to the barrel. She let out a low whistle of admiration, turning the gun over in her hands as she took in its details. The hand-grip was night-black and clashed against the glossy silver surface of the rest of the weapon, bar several strips of gold metal running up the barrel. It looked like a semi-automatic, but those were incredibly rare and hard to come by...and she didn't think they got this big!

Shion glanced over and saw what Rika had, how she was eying it, and grinned. "A beauty, huh?" she said, momentarily stopping in her gun-browsing to become a mini-tour guide. "Gas-operated semi-auto 19 .50 action express handgun. 'Desert Eagle,' they call it. Straight out of Israel. Pirated, actually. That model right there technically shouldn't exist yet; they never made any, cuz the design was still in planning. That's a Mark XIX--the only one of its kind. And it's _gorgeous._ Never been fired. Worth a fortune!"

"Wow, Shion," Keiichi admired, looking over a rather foreign-looking revolver. He wasn't about to take it himself, but it looked cool. "These things come from all over, huh?"

Shionnodded, swelling with pride. "Yup, you betcha! Stuff from all over the world. Enough guns to supply an army!"

Rena remained silent, carefully picking up a polished katana from the rack it had been placed on with its 9 other brethren. It had been a long time since anyone used a samurai sword, but these ones looked factory-new. If they'd had factories back then. "Wow..."

After a comment from Shion that they shouldn't take all day, everyone broke out of their amazed stares and gawking and picked their poison. Keiichitook a combat shotgunanda regular pistol from the shelves, being sure to stuff his pockets with ammo. Shion and Rena both took a foreign assault rifle Shion dubbed "M16." Rena stuck with her cleaver while Shion strapped a sword sheath to her belt and slid a katana into its holster. Rika, also picking a katana of her own--which just barely hovered above the ground as she walked--chose the "Desert Eagle" prototype she had found earlier, deciding now would be as good a time as ever to take its kind out for a test-run. It certainly _looked _impressive enough. As well as enough ammo to last, everyone grabbed a first-aid kit and strapped them to the gun holsters Shion found for them. Each kit wasn't really that much--medical tape, some sewing utensils for stitches, bandages, gauze, an antibiotic and some painkillers. Everything they'd need for a little while...assuming they didn't get killed.

All in all, the entire group looked ready for war. Which, perhaps they were--a war for survival.

"Alright," Shion said at last, fastening her M16 to her back. "So, we got the will and the way. Now we just need a plan."

"Doesn't this place have a lockdown-thing?" Keiichi inquired. "We can turn that on, get some supplies from upstairs, then root in, fortify ourselves..."

Rena shook her head. "That's not going to work. We can't just keep waiting and waiting. It's been two weeks already--Rena's kept track. We should assume that no one's coming and go out and call them instead of just waiting and waiting."

"I'm with her," Shion put in. "We gave 'em enough time, Keiichi. You saw how many of those things are out there--they probably figure Hinamizawa's dead and aren't going to waste their time with it. They're probably going to have evacs and things in the major cities, like Tokyo."

"We can't reach Tokyo," Keiichi said. "We gotta take the bullet train, then two more trains, and...no, it's too far away. We need something else."

"Okinomiya," Rika offered, glancing at Hanyuu, who nodded in agreement. "There are some pretty tall buildings. I bet maybe some helicopters or something could be looking for people who made it. They have a police force there, too. Who knows--maybe they held out?"

Shion mulled this over a bit, then nodded. "Alright. So, the plan is that we head to Okinomiya to see if anyone made it and, hopefully, find some help. Any objections?"

Keiichi nodded. "Yeah, I got one: we almost got killed on the way over here, and that was just from here to the shrine. How the hell are we going to make it walking all the way to Okinomiya?"

"Who said anything about walking?" Shion pinched her tongue between her teeth in childish delight, dangling a set of keys in front of her. "There's a limo out front. We can drive there...unless you'd prefer to walk."

Keiichi scoffed. "I'm a city boy, remember? I prefer to ride."

Now it was Rena's turn to speak up; "But, the street is filled with cars! Can you really drive around all of them, Shii-chan? Can you?"

"Why, of course!" Shion replied, as if nothing could be more natural. "You think I'd let myself go through life without learning how to _drive?_ Please!"

"And the zombie-guys?" Keiichi asked, half-expecting the answer.

"Does the term 'speed bump' mean anything to you?"

Keiichi sighed, shaking his head. "Naturally..."

"Alrighty!" Shion clapped her hands together. "Seeing as how nobody else has any objections, let's all go for a little road trip!"

"Shotgun," Rika blurted, heading out the door.

Keiichi looked like she'd grown a second head. "W-wha- no way! _I_ get shotgun! I called it!"

"Did not."

"Did so!"

"No he didn't, Rika-chan. He didn't!"

"Sh-shut up!"

"Nyahahahaha! Sorry, Kei-chan! You already get your shotgun, right there on your back!"

"No fair! Aw, come on, guys! It's a limo, for god's sake! I want to ride shotgun!!"

* * *

Upstairs, after determining that Rikawasin fact going to ride shotgun(much to Keiichi's dismay), everyone headed over to the Sonozaki estate's garage. Shion pushed the button to open it...frowned, pushed it again, then several more times before noting the red "Lockdown" symbol was lit up. "Uh oh..."

"'Uh oh?'" Keiichi mirrored. "'Uh oh?' What's 'uh oh?'"

"The upstairs is still under lockdown," Shion explained. "The Sonozaki estate has this fancy security system that shuts off separate parts of the esate from the outside. Looks like they shut off the garage before they...whatever."

Rena frowned, hand drifting to her chin as a nervous habit. "Can Shii-chan turn it off?"

Shion nodded. "Yeah...I guess. I don't know the passwords or anything for the security console downstairs, but...there's an emergency override for a situation somewhat like this." She pointed to a series of blank rectangular buttons above the "Lockdown" light. "I know the sequence...but there's an alarm that sounds as a result. And it's pretty loud..." Her voice drifted off.

She didn't need to finish--everyone knew what came next. _Loud enough to attract the horde._

A tense silence followed before Keiichi spoke up. "...so..this is the only way to the car?"

"Yep."

"And the only way we can get in is if we set off the alarm?"

"Yep."

"So we don't have a choice but to attract another horde?"

"Pretty much."

"Damn." Keiichi sighed, filled with grim resolution. "Guess we don't have an alternative. Hit it."

Shion nodded, and approached the keypad. She paused a moment, keying in what she remembered, finger hovering over the last button to finish the sequence. "Everyone, get ready."

Rika pulled out her Desert Eagle, snapping on the flashlight, as it was still dark out. Keiichi readied his shotgun with one hand, reaching for Rena's hand withtheother. Rena did likewise with her M16, giving Keiichi's hand a squeeze. They both shared a meaningful look before looking back to Shion, nodding.

Shion pushed the button.

An ear-piercing alarm sounded off, and Rika could hear the distant, rolling noise of a howling storm of undead monsters as they heard what could be compared to a sound-based flare. The horde was on its way.

Shion immediately yanked the door open, starting out with her AK's flashlight lighting the way. "C'mon!" she urged, waving her hand as she started up the long driveway. "The car's just up over he-" Shion was interrupted by a howling scream, followed by what seemed to sound like a creature forcibly hacking up a wet fur ball. Shion turned in time to see a tangle of wet, red tissue snag around her like a rope, snapping across her upper torso and forcibly yanking her off her feet, dragging her down the driveway to the source of the living rope. "Aagh- son of a- Guys! Help, guys! Guys?! Guys!!"

Keiichi, Rena, and Rika all scrambled to catch up with Shion as she was dragged away, forced to come around to the front to avoid Shion's flailing feet. All three of them latched onto Shion's arms, pulling in retaliation, using their green-haired friend as a rope for their little tug-or-war with their tongue-happy combatant. There was a stand off for a little while before Rika, seeing as her strength was the smallest and least needed, pulled out and readied her Desert Eagle, following the tongue to find their assailant. The infected appeared to be a person, limbs elongated and stretched slightly with one of its shoulders hitched up higher than the other, head at an awkward angle. Its arms and side of its head were covered in rolls of bumpy skin, its flesh colored a deathly gray. Rika, not expecting such a sight, was momentarily stunned, taking in the creature as she smelled the putrid smoke that seemed to be seeping out of its skin--a combination of sewage, decay, and burning tar. "What...the hell..."

Hanyuu materialized beside Rika, waving a transparent hand in front of her friend's face. "Rika, hurry!" she cried, nervously glancing back towards the garage they were headed for. "The horde is coming! Shoot it, Rika, shoot it! They're coming!"

Drawn out of her momentary daze, Rika focused her vision on the creature, aimed her Desert Eagle at it, and pulled the trigger. A spectacular and satisfying _crack,_followed by a wheezing cry and a greenish-colored smokescreen, nearly knocked Rika off her feet and the gun out of her hand. She quickly collected herself and the weapon in case the creature was still alive, finding only a cloud of foul smoke and a large inhuman corpse sprawled across the ground. She turned to see Rena and Keiichi pulling Shion to her feet, who was throwing the now severed tongue off of her as if it were a snake capable of biting her.

The moment of calm didn't last--the slight rumbling in the ground and snarling getting closer reminded everyone that the horde was still on its way, and Rika could see a wall of infected charging full-tilt up the hill, trampling each other as they all vied for the chance to get the first bite, and the first kill.

No one said anything--they only turned in the opposite direction, and started running for all they were worth. The sound of a snapping and growling crowd seemed to get closer with every step they took. Rika barely experienced any time passage as they bolted for the car at the end of the lengthy driveway, which seemed to stretch for miles.

Shion arrived first, whipping out a set of keys with a shaky hand as she desperately stabbed for the car door's lock. In the mean time, everyone got in front of the car, aimed their weapons, and fired. Both Rena and Keiichi were momentarily thrown off balance, having fired a weapon--bar Keiichi's BB gun--for the first time in their lives as Rika fired freely, unloading her entire clip into the oncoming horde with seemingly no effect, bar a few trampled corpses. As she ejected her spent magazine and reached for a new one, her comrades had recovered and were now firing freely--Rena full-auto with her M16, Keiichi pumping and firing as fast as his shotgun would load shells. The horde's front lines stumbled like they'd hit a wall, blood and bits of flesh ejecting out into the air as lead funneled into them, only to be mowed down from behind as the oncoming horde ran them down, pounding their bullet-riddled bodies into the cement below.

After what felt like an eternity, with the horde not 10 meters away, Shion finally yelled "C'mon!" as she ducked into the driver's seat, beating the car's horn to get her friends' attention. The car doors barely unlocked before they were flung open, three terrified and adrenaline-drunk kids practically threw themselves into the streamline jet-black limousine, pulling the doors shut with all their might-

-Rena screamed as an arm jutted through the closing door on her side, an infected snarling in indignance at being slammed in the door. The horde washed over the car, and it seemed like ever single infected in the garage was trying to pool through the ajar door, jammed on one of their own, all at once. Keiichi promptly aimed his shotgun over Rena and pressed the barrel into the infected's arm as she backed into him, trying to avoid the clawing monster's grasp. The gun went off--a bang and spray of blood filled the long backseat of the car, followed by a severed arm flopping to the floor. The door was instantly slammed shut as the unfortunate infected stumbled back, the horde inadvertently shutting the very door they wished to go through in their combined eagerness.

Rena whimpered as she vainly tried wiping herself off--to no avail, as her entire front side was completely drenched--as Keiichi rapidly tried to see if she was okay, shoving his shotgun down where it wouldn't be any harm. Rika leaned into the driver's cabin and yelled, "Go!!"

Shion, to Rika's amazement, laughed. "Ahahaha! Relax, you guys! This whole car is bullet-proof. Those sorry bastards can't get in!" She sneered out her door window, giving the snarling and bloodied faces just outside a rather un-flattering gesture. "Take that, you sons a bitches! Hope you weren't hungry, you freaks! Ahahaha!"

The limo interior was silent, apart from the muffled sound of the horde outside as it tried desperately to beat its way into the armored car to get the fresh meat inside. Though they left not a dent in the car's armored exterior, the limousine shook from side to side lightly on its shocks from the forces of the beating it was receiving. Though quite safe, the passengers were still a bit nervous, turning and looking out all the windows as their adrenaline continued coursing through them. Through every spot they could find, all they could see were snarling, animalisitc faces and clawed hands clawing desperately to get at them.

Everyone was unnerved, but Keiichi was the next one to speak. "Uh, Shion, if you're done, would you_ kindly _get us the hell out of here?"

Shion sighed, finally turning the car on. "Ah, well. Fun while it lasted." The car rumbled to life, much to the dismay of the horde outside. "Alright, kiddies, hang onto your..." Shion stopped, staring at the infected standing directly in front of the car. "What in the...?"

Rika followed her gaze, seeing a massive, bloated infected blocking their way, skin bulging at its sheer bulk and obesity. Its limbs seemed waterlogged, its neck vanishing under its sheer fatness. It was clear this obesity wasn't natural--several bubbles of skin were forming on its bulging belly, where its neck would be, and out of its right eye, throbbing and pulsing like errant, dying hearts and un-pop-able bubbles. A bit shocked herself, Rika watched as the horde cleared slightly to let it through. The obese infected then leaned back, appeared to burp, and then puked out a spray of thick, green sludge, covering the windshield and drenching the front end of the vehicle with its putrid viscousness. The horde seemed enraged by this act, suddenly howling in unison and beating on the car with new-found vigor, shaking the car about as hard as possible on its shocks.

Hanyuu, visible and audible only to Rika, curled her lip and let out a low sound of disgust at the green slime. "That's gross..."

Finally, Rika had had enough, beating the back of Shion's chair. "_Shion!!"_

"Alright!" Shifting the gear into a good position, Shion stomped on the accelerator.

The car jerked forward, bouncing the bloated infected away as it crept out, only continuing as it ran the infected down and knocked it off its feet, lurching as it was squished beneath the wheels-

-suddenly, the infected transformed into a red mist, bits of flesh and green bile flying out in every direction as the obese infected exploded. The limo raised up off the ground, teetered for a moment as the energy canceled out, and slammed back down onto its wheels, causing each of the passengers to cry out in surprise and fear. Shion's foot never let up off the pedal, trying to force it back into the inside of the car in an effort to get it to go faster. The infected behind the "Boomer" suddenly found themselves on the receiving-end of a 2-ton hunk of metal charging out into the night, sucking them under and spitting chunks out the back like a wood chipper on wheels.

Forcibly parting the horde, the night-black and now bloodied and vomit-cover vehicle plowed through the swarm of undead like the ultimate crowd-control, finally reaching the end of the runway-like driveway and smashing through the reinforced barrier keeping it isolated from the outside, which the horde had simply scaled upon their way in. The relentless wannabe-tank broke the barrier like it was made of drywall, charging out into the night in a rain of debris and squealing tired, making a sharp turn that seemed to defy physics as it rounded the bend and tore down the street. Defeated but not deterred, the horde charged off after them, as if oblivious to the fact that their target was rapidly disappearing into the distance.

The inside of the limousine was silent, apart from the paced breathing of its passengers, the hum of the engine, and the occasional squeak from the windshield-wipers as they fervently tried to clear the view-port of any and all green, viscous bile. Shion appeared completely relaxed, bar the occasional turning of the steering wheel as she weaved around the sporadically-placed cars in the road. Rena, having given up on cleaning herself off, now leaned over in the passenger seat and rested her head on Keiichi's shoulder, eyes closed with the faint curls of a smile on her lips, severed arm forgotten. Keiichi placed an arm around her and laid his cheek on her hair, closing her eyes in an attempt to partake in a light doze. Both of them appeared to be well and truly at peace, despite what had just occurred.

Rika, having climbed carefully into the navigator's seat--she _had _called shotgun, after all--now laid her head back into her designated seat, Desert Eagle in her lap, which she had given a thumbs-up in reference of its little trial-run. She watched Keiichi and Rena snuggle together from the mirror, smiling, before turning her attention to Hanyuu, who appeared to be sitting on the dashboard in front of her--in all reality, she was flying along at the same speed as the car they were in, as she was completely unaffected by its velocity, effortlessly floating and giving the illusion that she was in fact inside the car. "You did it," she cooed, smiling at her filthy blood-covered friend. "You did it. See? I knew you could do it. I told you."

"You did," Rika muttered, keeping her voice disguised by the rumble of the car as it sped along. "But it's not over yet."

"Hau." Hanyuu nodded, expression slightly more serious as she faded out of Rika's awareness, offering the girl a chance to rest.

Rika gladly took up the offer, closing her eyes and leaning back into the soft leather seat. Thoughts drifting briefly, she found herself far too exhausted to continue maintaining consciousness, drifting off into a slumber--the likes of which she couldn't remember having prior to this.

_The battle against Fate rages on._

* * *

_**Author's Note**_

Hey, sorry for the wait, whoever likes to read this. I was under the impression no one wanted to read it, as there were no reviews. Want more? R&R, and your wish shall be my command; any deleted spaces are just my computer--I'll edit later. Toodles!


	4. Higurashi in the Storm

**Chapter Four**

**Higurashi in the Storm**

* * *

_There is no story to be told._

_There is no young here to live and grow old._

_All that remains for the shadow is doubt_

_and the haze of a sun that is doomed to go out._

_Open your eyes._

_Furude..._

"...Rika."

The heir of the Furude Shrine ceased jerking in her sleep and bolted up like lightning...and hit her head on the dashboard. _"Fuck!"_

There was an eerie silence following her exclamation. After rubbing her forehead for a moment, the pause made her uneasy, and she instinctively looked past Hanyuu's transparent form (who was also clutching her forehead; damned shared pain) to see why.

Shion stared from the driver's seat, mouth slightly ajar. Keiichi had stopped in the middle of what he was doing with one of the M16's in the back, staring up at Rika in surprise. Rena looked pale and ready to faint. All eyes - ethereal and corporeal - were on her.

Moody and irritated from hitting her head after an already unpleasant dream, Rika didn't feel like being stared at. She scowled and demanded, _"What?"_

All eyes instantly averted. Rena and Hanyuu looked away like they'd been struck; Keiichi resumed struggling with the safety to Rena's gun. Shion shrugged nonchalantly and returned her attention to the road, casually shifting gears. She put one arm up around her seat in a relaxed position, looking oddly casual. She also wasn't wearing her seatbelt.

_Like it matters,_ Rika thought bitterly, leaning her head in her hand with a heavy sigh. _What are we gonna do, get a ticket?_

Funny how the little things stuck with you, like wearing your seatbelt. If they found a stoplight, Shion'd probably slow down...no, wait..._Shion._ The lead-foot demon driver. Riiiiiiiight. She'd be lucky if the only speed bumps she created were zombies. _Assuming there's anything else out there._

Rika shook her head; she didn't want to think about that. She didn't want to think period.

A little while ago, the relative peace and quiet against the hum of the road and the car had been soothing to Rika. Now, however, the constant drone of the engine grated against her nerves like a piece of sandpaper, every last noise seeming to annoy her more and more as the seconds passed, and the fatigue that seemed to melt away before she went to sleep had returned and flooded straight to her head. In a nutshell, she was touchy, irritable, and felt like crap. _Again._

_I just can't win, can I?_

"...it's what you said."

Rika scoffed, waving a clammy hand in the general direction of Hanyuu's voice. "What, can't a girl swear if she wants to?"

There was another pause; Rika didn't bother to look to see what looks she got. She could hear Keiichi start messing with the gun again, so she figured they decided to let it go. Not that she cared.

"...no," Hanyuu eventually said, voice quiet despite the fact that no one could hear her. "You're not supposed to say those things...it's a bad word, Rika. It's not nice..."

Rika refrained from laughing out loud (she didn't want to come off as _completely_ insane, after all), merely rolling her eyes and muttering, "I don't give a damn if it's 'nice.' Who cares?"

Nobody replied. The limo was basked in an awkward silence.

Rika continued glaring out the windshield, watching the blurs that went by and trying to determine what were signs and what were dead things and which of those dead things were still semi-alive semi-dead things. Eventually her mood fell so low that she couldn't even care enough to be in a bad mood, and she sighed in depression. This sucked.

Movement caught Rika's eye, and she looked to Hanyuu, noting how she was staring at her. She was biting her bottom lip, appearing as if she was sitting on the divider between the front seats, fingers fiddling together anxiously. She looked worried...about what, though? Her? Them? Everything? Whether or not they'd lose their minds together? Whether that was even their greatest concern? None of which she had any power over, of course, but still...

_She must feel so helpless,_ Rika thought, feeling a sudden pang of regret for being so curt towards her friend. _A powerless god is just a ghost. How...horrible._

Rika looked her ethereal companion in the eye, who matched her gaze. Hanyuu continued looking Rika back in the eye until she faltered, looking down to her hands, then to Rika's lap.

Hanyuu looked back to Rika's eyes and gave a small smile. Rika looked back out the windshield and smiled as well, giving her own hand a small squeeze. The feeling of her own hand's contact wasn't comforting to her, but it would be for someone else.

For the umpteenth time, Rika re-solidified her devotion to her friend. She was Hanyuu's only connection to the world, and if she was gone, she'd be lost. Hanyuu would just be a ghost without her. Rika was all Hanyuu had, just as Hanyuu, too, was all Rika had. She had watched her other friends die so many times, she'd come to see their presence as temporary, possibly even disposable. Hanyuu never left; Hanyuu was the only permanent thing that stayed true from world to world. In all reality, all they had was each other.

Not only did Rika have to take care of herself, she had to take care of Hanyuu, too. They shared everything: pain, grief, sorrow...everything. And Rika was the only link to anything she had. She had to look after her. She had to take care of Hanyuu. Her own life wasn't the only one she was responsible for.

Rika indirectly held Hanyuu's hand. Hanyuu floated down through the divider between them like the ghost she was and placed her hand so that it overlapped Rika's, like they really were holding hands. It was as close to genuine affection as two individuals on opposing planes of existence could get.

"Someday," Hanyuu said quietly, voice audible only to Rika. "Someday, I want...I hope we can...touch. For real."

Rika nodded, closing her eyes as she imagined herself in a world with only one plane of existance. A world where it was just her and Hanyuu, no one else...a world where the contact on her hand wasn't her own. She tried to shut out the two-way contact...only felt with one hand. Because in this world, the other was Hanyuu's. "...that would be nice."

Shion arched an eyebrow, glancing at the purple-haired girl with her hands together in the lap of her soiled green dress. "What would be nice?"

Rika, too caught up in her fantasy, kept her eyes closed and didn't reply.

Shion waited a second, realizing after a second that the girl hadn't heard her. Rather than repeat herself, the greenette looked back to the passangers in the back seat, quirking an eyebrow in an unspoken question.

Rena looked down, though quickly regretted doing so, as her gaze found the dismembered forearm at her feet. Repulsed and distressed, Rena pulled her legs up to avoid it and hug her knees, absently rubbing at a growing blood smear to try and remove it from her white dress. Really, she was just making it worse: the dress was ruined. Too bad it was her favorite.

Keiichi failed to meet Shion's look, placing a hand on Rena's shoulder. Rena's head moved over to place her cheek on the back of his hand, silently acknowledging her worry and accepting the comfort. No one had to say anything to know they were all concerned for their friend's sanity.

Dissatisfied with the silence, Shion scowled and turned back around just in time to see something in the road ahead of them. Straight ahead of them. Approaching at 60 miles per hour...and the limited distance the headlights could go in the light haze meant that the distance was not only closing, but short to begin with.

Shion hit the brakes. _Hard._

Gravity in the car suddenly shifted, and everyone was yanked forward towards the new "down" to the tune of screeching tires and the joint cries of its startled passengers. The transition was hardly smooth.

Going from sixty to zero was a feat, even for a car as fancy and expensive as Shion's limo, but the easier alternative - just hitting the thing in the road - was hardly desirable. Shion pressed down hard on the brake pedal, not relenting even as she was shoved forward and risen out of her sear from the inertia (should have worn a seatbelt). The car's brake pads glowed red-hot beneath them as they clamped hard down on the vehicle's cylinders, slowed them down, and gradually brought them to a clean stop.

When gravity returned to normal and everyone fell back against their seats, the headlights were barely visible...namely because the car was so close to the object in the road, it blocked the light. There wasn't much light for observing, though it was fairly safe to assume they'd come less than an inch from slamming into a giant rock in the middle of the road, easily as thick as the car that almost became a wad of crumpled sheet metal.

Shion still continued to grip the steering wheel with a death grip, eyes wide and knuckles white. "...Jesus."

No one said anything, too busy trying to make up for the heartbeats they'd skipped.

Rika inhaled a slow breath, gradually releasing it out as she convinced her fingers to uncurl from the door handle; she patted her hand and gave Hanyuu a small smile, as she was wearing an identical expression as the others. Their shared fear and surprise deteriorated between the two of them, and they wearily smiled together.

Keiichi was the next to speak up, heaving a sigh of relief. "That was close," he breathed. He glanced at Rena, looking her over to assure she was okay; the grip on her hatchet's handle faded quickly as she got her bearings. "Gotta be more careful."

Shion let out a "tut," shifting gears with a shaking, slightly clumsy hand. "You probably would have wrapped us around a tree miles ago...idiot..."

The gradually dawning feeling of relief made everyone else chuckle nervously, nerves shot and spirits lifted a hair by default. Rika, too, started to relax...until Hanyuu's emotions fed through to her, and her face fell like an anvil. "Wait."

Before anyone could inquire, they soon realized why. Four pairs of eyes and two ghostly ones stared out the windshield as they realized the rock they'd hit wasn't a rock...and that it was _breathing._

Rika never would have thought that it was a living, breathing creature. She knew there were some pretty weird creatures out there now, but they all looked so similar to humans; it was still horrible, but at least you didn't have to stretch your imagination to fit them into your head. This, however...this was different. Very different. And very, very bad.

The creature was far from human-sized: it was hunched over and facing away from them, but as it started to awaken from whatever nap they'd pulled it out of, its already large size grew even further up until it was almost ten feet tall. It's flesh was a tough-looking orangish yellow, like baked clay, but as it started to turn around, the creature's already intimidating appearance became downright terrifying.

Its arms were _huge_ - each the size of a full-grown person, solid meat and muscle that rolled like waves of molten iron under its leathery skin. Its hands alone were large enough to encompass Rika's entire body, and its chest was immense - broad enough to bear a cannon, and probably tough enough to take a shot from one. Possibly several. The creature, though ungodly large and powerful-looking, was betrayed by the traces of humanity that could be observed only if you squinted: its legs bore the same pants and shoes of whoever it had been before, completely unaltered from the waist down, forced to support itself with its arms as a result. Its head was distinctly human, its expression of frenzied and unbridled _rage,_ but still distantly human. So out of place was its human head that its chest was too large to support it: its jaw ceased to exist as its chin was crushed out of existence by its own frame, and a dried, shriveled tongue extended out of its permanently open mouth like a limb in need of amputation. What little hair remained on its head was a wilted gray and would probably look more appropriate hanging off a sun-weathered onion than a human skull.

But that was okay, because this was definitely _not_ a human. Its pants with a buckle still wrapped taut around its waist, however, suggested this hadn't always been the case.

The behemoth shifted its weight with its arms, pounding into the road hard enough to leave cracks with its palms alone, and with a single massive breath, it roared a bellowing, enraged war cry straight into the cabin of the car that _dared_ to disturb it. The entire car rattled from the intensity of its roar.

All eyes were as large as salad bowls, and all faces were pale. Rika felt a trickle of something cold run down her temple.

Numb as ice, Rika moved her lips, somehow managing to utter a single word: "Drive."

Unable to think otherwise, Shion shifted to reverse, stomped on the gas, and _drove._

Or at least, she tried. The tires screamed as the engine pumped power straight into them, spinning wildly to try and send the car in the opposite direction, but some strange reason, the car didn't move. The rotating rings of rubber squealed in protest as they ground themselves like erasers against the pavement beneath them, but to no avail. It was like they were glued in place - like even the car was too scared to move.

Or like the behemoth had stabbed its fingers into the roof of the car like the holes of a bowling ball. Either way, they were stuck.

"It's got us!" Rena shrieked, overcome with fear; her voice cracked in unison with her splintered composure, and she grappled onto Keiichi like a frenzied animal would a lifeline. "It's got us, got us! _Shion!_"

"I'm trying!" Shion cried, trying to shove her foot down through the floor of the car. Even her flawless composure was faltering; the alarm on her expression was bordering on terror. "You fucker, _let go!"  
_

As if in response to her demand, the tank-like monstrosity complied...though only after it wrapped another one of its massive arms around the hood of the vehicle and violently swung the vehicle to the side like a baseball bat.

Like the aforementioned baseball bat, the car went flying, tires never leaving the ground as it was sent spiraling out of control. Gravity shifted to the side as the car became a cramped tornado, filled with the screams of its four terrified inhabitants as they were pinned to a door or sent sprawling across the seat beside them. Tires screamed as the rubber vied desperately for control of its own momentum, attempting to gain a foothold of friction in the ground, only to catch the small ridge on the side of the road that tipped the car up as it continued to spiral to the side, then sent it into a tumble as it went even farther to the side. Gravity was in absolutely chaos now; everything not strapped in went flying and rolling in unison with the car, and the interior of it was now a complete storm of stray items and the weapons they weren't holding at the time. One of them discharged when it hit the roof, further terrifying those inside where the bullets could possibly hit.

After an eternity of rolling, the two-ton limousine lost momentum, teetered on one side as it tried desperately to flip upside-down, hesitated, and slammed onto its wheels, bouncing slightly from the shock.

Rika had a raw spot around her middle where her seatbelt had dug into her skin, but she was alive, relatively unharmed, and even more shaken than the car, which was now covered in scratches and dirt-marks where it had come into contact with a rock or two. Rena looked ready to either have a heart attack or pass out; either was a viable option by now. Keiichi looked like he'd gone into shock, and Shion - who had unwisely chosen to neglect wearing her seatbelt - was draped across the divider, feet dangling in Rika's peripheral vision. She groaned and leaned up, scrambling to sit back down, only to jam her tailbone on an M16 that had landed in her seat before her.

Everyone was battered, bruise, and scared out of their mind, but very much alive. There was blood on the windshield, but the dismembered zombie arm resting on the dashboard suggested who the owner was. The small chink in the bulletproof glass with a crumpled pebble of metal in the center indicated where the gunshot that had gone off earlier had landed...coincidentally directly in front of Rika, where her head was level.

Rika turned, ignoring her sore spine. There was a hole going straight through the back of her seat that angled upward from her midsection and stuck in the windshield. Had she been sitting upright when the gun had gone off, it would have gone straight through her. The rolling car had saved her life. "...holy shit."

No one seemed to mind Rika's swearing now, growing frantic as the situation dawned on them. "Dammit! Where'd it go?"

"Is anyone hurt?"

"Where are we?"

"What the hell _was _that thing?"

"Shut up!" Shion snapped, tossing her gun out of the way into the back (Rena's yelped indicated where it landed) and quickly reorienting herself behind the wheel. "Everyone just shut up- where is it now?"

Rika's eyes rapidly scanned the darkness, patting her leg to request that Hanyuu do the same, wherever she was. Said ghostly entity floated down through the ceiling of the car, looking lost for a second before suddenly shrieking and pointing out the windshield.

A split second after she did so, a shape materialized into the circles the limo's headlights formed, and the ground shook like an earthquake. _"Back up!"_

Shion floored it, tires screamed, and the tank-like monster thundered after them as they shot backwards into the darkness behind them.

The monster leaped forward with a thrust from its arms, smashing a pair of titanic fists down into the car's already disfigured hood, bending the bulletproof metal like it was made out of plastic and halting it in its tracks. The tires continued to scream as it readjusted its hold, dropping an octave as the resistance against the wheels continued...and the beast's shape through the cracked windshield started to angle upward.

Rena screamed and gripped onto Keiichi, digging her nails into the boy as he struggled to find something stable to grip. Shion's look was one of mindless desperation; one of the heels of her shoes cracked as she pressed harder and harder into the accelerator and tried to free them from the monster's grasp. The car tilted farther and farther up and was now threatening to be flipped onto its back.

Mind reeling from adrenaline, a tiny part of Rika's mind - the part that had been trained to work through the pain and the fear, though nothing quite like this had ever come up - governed her hand and lanced it outward. Totally on impulse, Rika's only other backup plan was to grab the gear stick, shove it to the side, then stab it forward to set the car in the opposite direction.

The engine grumbled in disapproval at the sudden shift, but the transition of directions was all but instantaneous. The direction of the wheels snapped a full 180 degrees and started to spin forward, rather than backward, still digging little ruts in the ground at the angle the car was at but now sending the dirt in the other direction. The limo's front wheels were far from the ground, sure, but luckily the car was a full-wheel drive, and two of four of the tires still had some ground to shift under them and start to move the vehicle.

Not expecting the sudden shift in the car's movement, the creature let out a frustrated noise as it started to bend backwards, now at an angle that it couldn't hold the car up due to its direction. Its hold unable to shift in time, the car started creeping downwards until, with a cry, the beast was slammed onto its back as the full weight of the vehicle slammed down onto it, their combined weights sending a tremor through the ground. Still going forward and with momentum steadily building, the car jerked forward as the front tires caught onto the creature's chest, using it as a ramp to go up slightly, come slamming back down to the ground, grinding something against its shocks, and continuing forward at full-speed. The largest speed-bump in history was left in a cloud of dust and the stench of burning rubber, plus two massive rugburns where the tires connected and ground half an inch off of its chest.

Once again in control, Shion sent the limo flying back towards where one flickering headlight indicated where the highway was, turned so they were perpendicular with the road beneath them, and just kept on driving. The meters raced backwards as the yellow dashes down the center of the road blurred together, speed gauge continuing to point higher and higher up as she sped away for all she was worth. Her knuckles had grown white around the steering wheel; her eyes darted rapidly back and forth, searching the absolute darkness ahead for anything else she might have to suddenly turn around and scream away from.

Everyone knew the creature was still alive; simply being run over by a car was nothing to stop the all-consuming rage and hatred that emanated from that monster. They just pissed it off. And now they were running away. Far, far away; hopefully to an extent that they'd never see that abomination ever again.

But even this was uncertain. They just couldn't be certain of anything anymore...besides that the entire world had gone completely insane.

Besides the howl of the road, not a noise could be heard. Everyone was as rigid as a statue and staring straight ahead.

Gradually people started coming to, and as soon as Rika gained awareness, she determined that the cause of her migraine was from none other than the heartbeat slamming against the insides of her eardrums. She looked to the side a little to the divider, where Hanyuu hovered beside her, purple eyes wide and visibly trembling. Rika placed a hand over her other hand and gave it a firm squeeze; Hanyuu gulped and shook her head, squeezing her own hand shut over nothing to try and return the gesture.

The first to speak was Rena, whose voice came out as a tiny squeak that barely even competed with the sound of the road under them. "Sh-should we..b-b-be going this fast, Sh-Shii-chan...?"

"Shut the hell up!" Shion suddenly snapped, voice as wild as look on her face. For some reason, she looked angry. Rena was silenced instantly, but Shion continued, grip increasing on the steering wheel. "I got enough problems to worry about right now - like what the fuck I'm going to do when I have to get this car fixed! It's gotta be a mess! God, I can hear the shocks grindings, breaks probably shot to hell..."

Rika stared at Shion with a disbelieving expression. "...are you telling me," she said, voice slowly growing in incredulity and indignity, "that we got sent flying across the road for half a mile, almost flipped upside-down, nearly got shot-" She gestured angrily at the hole in her seat. "-almost got crushed by some inhuman _thing, _and you're worried about _the car?"_

Shion said nothing, gesturing jerkily with one hand to herself as she muttered nothings to herself, incoherent and unintelligible. Her pupils were pinpricks against her irises - green lasers against a sea of soulless white - and appeared to be having some kind of nervous breakdown. She seemed itchy suddenly, stopping her gesturing to scratch irately at her wrist.

Rika recognized the symptoms and said nothing. She looked forward slowly, giving off no sudden movements. Shion's level was wavering upward due to the fear and mental stress; the last thing Rika needed to do was start looking suspicious to the eyes of the clinically insane.

Rika always had liked Mion better: not only was she better company, she was always the more stable of the two Sonozaki siblings. At least with Mion-centric arcs, Rika hadn't had to carry knives in her dress to protect herself should something go awry...

No one said anything besides that, and after a while even Shion's mumblings started to die down as her mentality stabilized. Much to everyone's relief, she started to ease off the accelerator, dropping the car down into the double digits on the speed-gauge and even further down to a more reasonable speed...which, ironically enough, was the speed limit. _Funny how the little things stick with you._

The initial shock of the event had started wearing off, and as the adrenaline faded, whatever was containing shattered nerves slowly drained away. As this happened, immanent collapses were set back on course, and Rena, unable to bear the stress of it all, began to emit small, gasping sobs. She sat rigid in her seat, fingers digging into the fabric under her, making no move to wipe away her tears or contain herself. She just sort of...fell apart.

Keiichi, for once, appeared incapable of coming to her aide. The boy had a numb expression on his face, and he continued to look ahead, eyes unfocused as he explored the alternate dimension behind the back of Shion's seat. In a moment of vulnerability, the alleged "magician of words" had fallen painfully silent. No one was there to comfort Rena, who continued to cry. She looked more alone than Rika had ever seen her.

She couldn't stomach it. The pain she might have otherwise been able to ignore from the sight slipped past her otherwise impregnable defenses, and beyond the point of caring about her front, Rika made a move. She unbuckled her seatbelt and reached up into the space that Hanyuu occupied, who shifted aside as she was passed through (she never liked people walking through her, for some reason). Ignoring the move Rena moved to scoot away, Rika moved over so she was leaning into her friend's side, comparatively small arms hugging her waist. "Rena."

Her voice was unyielding - a freight train of seriousness and cut-to-the-chase monotone that, otherwise, might seem a bit cold. It was the same no-nonsense that a mother might use against an errant child.

Completely out of reflex, Rena moved to shove Rika away, but the purple-haired girl wouldn't give in. "Don't fight me," Rika said, tone unyielding and relentless. Her voice dropped a little bit as she leaned up onto her knees to be level with her, easing back and becoming a little bit more soft. "Don't fight me, Rena. Let me in. I'm your friend, aren't I?"

Rena pressed into the door as she tried - and failed - to avoid Rika. Unable to escape or back away, Rena gave up; the structure in her spine failed as she slumped into Rika's form, who wrapped her arms tighter around her. Like the contact was of needles, Rena's sobs started to escalate in pitch.

Rika held on and didn't let go. "Shhh," Rika murmured into her ear, patting her head like she sometimes did when their play left one person feeling out or dejected. Now, though, it took on a more nurturing undertone than what Rika was accustomed to letting out. "It's okay, Rena, it's okay...I'm right here. Rika-chan's got you. It's gonna be alright."

Rena shook her head, even as she started to hug Rika back. "H-how?" Rena cried, voice broken. "E-e-everyth...ing's fa...alling apa- art..." She took several gasping inhales now, none of which were sufficient for air. "Eve...rybod...dy d-dying...I-I..." She gasped again, then wailed, "M-Mii-cha-an..."

Rika shook her head, already knowing what she was thinking. "It's not your fault, Rena. It's not your fault..."

"Y-yes it is...it is! I-I was the...one wh-who said to...g-go t-t-to Satoko-ch-chan's...a-and...th-they-"

"It's not your fault," Rika repeated. Rena didn't listen, continuing to babble and, ultimately, place the blame on herself. Finally Rika said "Look at me," turning Rena's head to meet the girl's bloodshot, swollen blue eyes. "It's not your fault, Rena. I promise you it's not your fault. Oyashiro-sama knows it isn't your fault - she knows, Rena. I know she does. You have nothing to be guilty for. You're innocent."

Rika fed off of Rena's obsession with the blame and curses of the Hinamizawa deity to find a good route to her heart, and sure enough, her words struck home. Rena's eyes widened and lips quivered at the mentioning of her all-powerful and vengeful idol coming to her defense, teetered on the brink, and lost her resolve to continue her efforts. After a split second of silence, Rena's sobs continued, though they were now muffled as she buried her face into the crook of Rika's neck, who continued to hold her despite the size difference. Rika held her friend - something she hadn't done in the longest time because of her desire to distance herself from those she knew were going to die anyway. She couldn't do that here; she couldn't go it alone. Not even _she_ was strong enough for that; if she couldn't do it, someone as brittle and fragile as Rena didn't stand a chance. She couldn't do this by herself - none of them could. None of that "lone wolf" mentality was going to stand ; it was just going to get them all killed faster.

She refused to throw in the towel so readily. Not now. She'd come too far and endured too much just to let one exotic, far-flung world get her goat. Not now, and not ever.

Rena's sobs slowly deteriorated into whimpers as the brunt of her mourning passed, now only occasionally squeaking out a name of one of her deceased loved ones. Keiichi eventually came out of his stupor and slid over to compensate for his absence, opening his arms and hugging both girls, sandwiching Rika between the warm bodies of two good friends. The sensation was inexplicably pleasant, and Rika didn't fight it, sliding down into a sitting position, settled neatly into what was turning out to be a comfortable embrace. Unwilling to leave anyone out, Rika leaned forward and placed her hand palm-up on the divider between the front seats. She left it open until Shion placed her own hand atop it, though it was more her holding _Rika's_ hand since hers was much larger. Even Hanyuu joined in and placed her hand through Shion's so it could form around Rika's, too.

They were scared and they were lost, but they still had each other. Higurashi in a storm had a better chance of surviving if they stuck together.

All they could do was drive on - venture further into the howling storm - and hold on tight: it was going to be a bumpy ride.

* * *

_**AN:**_

Well well, what's this? Heavens, look at this dust! *starts dusting*

Okay, I'll admit: I only came back to this because I'm having writer's block on my other stories, and I've been scribbling away on one-shots that probably won't ever see the light of day as it is already. If I'm going to do something about writer's block, I might as well be productive about it. Like this! :D

Well, it's been a while, and I know it's one of my less popular fics, but...hell, _someone_ is bound to read this stuff, right? If you'd like to be that awesome reviewer that leaves that little blurb telling me how I did that would make my day and possibly guarantee this story's tripback from the (un)dead,, feel free to leave a comment. There's a button especially made for you. :3

I love you all.

_~The Librarian_


	5. Improper Procedures

**Chapter 5**

**Improper Procedures  
**

* * *

Sleep had proven to be a cruel mistress to Rika these last few days; if she could get it at all, it was always in the form of nightmare-ridden collapse, her dreams haunted with demonic voices behind clawing, bloody fingers and snarling faces. Even with her friends pressed around her with their warmth, Rena on one side and Keiichi the other, Rika knew she wouldn't sleep. It just wasn't possible.

With a time of inactivity before her and rest out of the question, Rika did what she always did when she couldn't sleep: closed her eyes, enjoyed what comforts were provided for her, and reflected on her past, both distant and new. It was a form of meditation she'd had a lot of time to master, and it had served her well. Maybe now of all times would be a good time to take measures to preserve her sanity.

She imagined worlds with better times instilled in them - days of warm summers and glowing suns, the song of cicadas serenading her from all around and later whispering caution when the inevitable approached. Days of mindless fun that even she could manage to lose herself in - where she could forget they were all doomed to die at the hand of an elite, faceless enemy. They were glorious days...days that she was missing now more than ever.

This world was...definitely different, though. It started pretty early - gave Rika plenty of time to see the warning signs creep in before Satoko was introduced back into her abusive uncle's life. She tried to drop hints, leave subtle cues...indirectly cause change in the grand scheme of things. But no matter what she did, she was never enough: Fate changed for no one. She could do nothing but watch as the world around her and the happy days she loved fell into ruin and the cycle reached its tragic climax for the umpteenth time. The cycle would continue after the arc had been completed; she was generally dead by then.

Every so often, though, her enemy would slip up. It was inevitable that she die in the end, but sometimes a blue moon of a world would present itself where she wouldn't escape her fate, but managed to delay it - got past her enemy and managed to live long enough to see what would happen if she survived. Of course, her enemy didn't like admitting they screwed up, so more often than not they assumed she was dead and just killed everyone in the village anyway. And then when it was done, Rika just...lived. Existing among a broken world that had since ended, lingering on with Hanyuu occasionally dropping the hint that she'd like to move on. For some inexplicable reason, Rika hung around. She stayed in the area, unable to support herself for long, since everything was dead, but...the fact that she was still alive...it was such an odd feeling. Almost like, in a way, she had won. She survived. She was still there. And for some reason, those few days of quiet and hunger and thirst as she withered away were some of the most peaceful and full of melancholy pride than any other. If she ever achieved her goal and found that perfect world, she imagined it'd be something like this...

She generally died within a week after that, claimed either by starvation or herself when she lost the feeling of pleasure from her survival. Her "high score" of surviving post-world collapse was, so far, around seven days. Compared to now, which was...

"How long have we been at this?"

To anyone watching, Rika would have asked the question to no one. Rena and Keiichi were slumped together, faces relaxed, creating a cocoon of living warmth around Rika between them. Shion had tried staying up to drive, but exhaustion caught up with her, and she was now slumped over in her seat, forehead resting against the steering wheel as she snored lightly. No one seemed able to hear her.

On an opposite plane of existence, however, the ethereal form of Hinamizawa's guardian deity turned drowsily in place, hovering in midair within the now-stationary car. A beam of light angled off the rear-view mirror streamed straight through her and made Rika squint. "Mmm..?"

"I said, how long have we been at this? How many days?"

Hanyuu seemed a bit dazed. Slowed by Rika's physical exhaustion and likely dealing with her own mental stress, Hanyuu looked distant for a moment, then shook her head, causing a few of her lavender hairs to drift in zero-gravity, like she was underwater. "I don't know...I haven't had a perception of time in centuries, Rika." She frowned at nothing in particular, looking focused. "A century...how long ago?"

"I don't know. I asked you."

"I don't know...I'm sorry..."

"Don't worry about it."

"M'kay..."

Silence filled the car. All that could heard were the gentle noises of breathing...and Shion's snoring. The engine was unnaturally silent.

"...is the car even on?"

Hanyuu leaned over to look at the dashboard to see if the lights were on. "There's no gas."

"It ran out?"

"Yeah."

"Geez. How long have we been sitting here?"

"Since Shion fell asleep."

"And that was?"

"I dunno...a little while ago. It was still dark out."

Rika chuckled. "Must be tired."

"You are, too."

Rika just shrugged. "You get used to it."

"Hau..."

She placed her own hand over the other. "Don't worry about me. I'll be alright."

Hanyuu 'hau'd again, trying to meet the feeling of Rika's touch. "I hate this, Rika. I'm so powerless...I want to help you."

Rika smiled, squeezing her hand a little more. "You are, Hanyuu. I don't know what I'd do if I had to do this alone. You're keeping me sane. That's helpful, right?"

"Hauu..." She fidgeted in midair, uncomfortable in her ghostly state. "It doesn't feel like enough..."

Rika sighed and shook her head, running her thumb over the back of her hand to grant Hanyuu a share of the sensation. As her mind went over the possibilities that could give Hanyuu the feeling of being helpful like she desired, she looked idly around the interior of the limo. "What time is it..."

Hanyuu leaned forward past the front seats. "...it's blinking. It says it's five o'clock..."

That didn't sound right. It wasn't bright enough for five in the afternoon, and the sun wouldn't be up at five in the morning...and blinking? "Damn. Big bulky thing musta screwed it up last night."

Hanyuu visibly shuddered, as if feeling a chill that only existed in her plane of reality. "It was scary, Rika...I saw its face..."

"Me too. That thing was like a tank."

"I hope we never see it again."

"Me neither."

Another silence passed. Hanyuu floated in place quietly as Rika closed her eyes, listening to the breaths of Rena and Keiichi on either side of her.

Suddenly, inspiration. "Hey Hanyuu, I got an idea. Why don't you be our scout?"

Hanyuu blinked sleepily. "Scout?"

"Yeah. You're like a ghost - you can pass through things. Nothing can see you, nothing can touch you, and you can go anywhere: through walls, around corners up ahead..."

"I can find things that you can't normally," Hanyuu finished, eyes widening and words speeding up in excitement. "I can fly ahead, look through a door into the next room-"

"Report back and warn us ahead of time. You're like my sixth sense."

"Yes!" Hanyuu cheered, pumping a fist victoriously into the air (ghosted it through the roof of the car). "A scout, a scout! I can be your scout! Hau, hauuu!"

Rika had to hold back her laughter at Hanyuu's delight; her friends were still sleeping around her. "Well, new scout," she said, voice hushed. "Can you look through the window for me to see if it's clear? I can't see past Rena."

It was a small first task, but a first task nonetheless, and Hanyuu took to it eagerly: she ghosted through the door and hovered outside, looking around in all directions. She floated out of sight above the car for a moment, then poked her head inside. "There's two over there, but they're a little ways off..."

"But it'd be safe to get out of the car?"

"I-I think..."

"Good." Rika carefully unwedged herself from between Rena and Keiichi, crawling over to the other door with no one resting against it. "I'm tired of all this sitting around."

The door opened with an unpleasant squeak, thereby attesting to the trauma the entire vehicle had endured the night prior. After working out the innumerable kinks in her spine and making Hanyuu give a face at all the popping noises, Rika let out a low whistle as she started to walk around the battered limo, one hand on the handle of her katana.

Quite simply, the car looked like it'd been through a tornado. Every square inch of its once glossy black exterior was covered in chinks and scratches and scars of dirt. Both back lights were knocks out, only one flickering headlight remaining, and the hood looked absolutely dreadful - like a big anvil dropped on it several times, then shot it with a few armor-piercing rounds.

Rika laughed out loud. "This thing looks raped."

If Hanyuu disapproved of this reference, she didn't comment on it. She appeared too distracted to mind, gaze locked on the two staggering shapes several dozen meters away. "What are they, Rika?"

Rika followed her friend's gaze, frowning at the two disoriented blurs against the rugged landscape beside the road. "Honestly, Hanyuu, I haven't the foggiest. I guess you could call them the living dead, but...that doesn't quite fit. Zombies are in fantasies."

Hanyuu bit her lip and said nothing.

Rika likewise said nothing, watching the two distant zombies with increasing displeasure until she simply grew tired of looking at them. "Where's my gun?"

Hanyuu vanished into the car for a few seconds, floating about its interior invisibly before reporting back, "Under the front seat, a little to the left."

Rika opened the passenger door, which also let out a pained noise of protest. She found the shining Desert Eagle right where Hanyuu said it'd be, searched briefly for the safeties, and held it out in the ready position, lining up one of the unfortunate shapes nearby.

She pulled the trigger- _bang._ The gun kicked hard against Rika's grip, bending her child-like arms from the force of it, but she leveled her aim quickly to fire again. It took one more shot before one of the shapes went down; the other went down after two more. She then started to walk, ignoring Hanyuu's warnings to "Be careful!" She was beyond being careful; she had death in her eye and judgment in her hand. Something was going to die.

As she approached the undead unfortunate enough to have been in her sights, Rika got a first-hand look at the power of the glimmering gun in her hand. The first zombie had a big chunk missing out of its neck, the force of the bullet pounding into it enough to peel the skin away across its chest and disfigure its jaw, giving it a bloody, pathetic resemblance to the behemoth that had roughed up Shion's precious car. It lay on the ground and didn't move.

The other zombie, however, was still alive. The hit she managed to land was to the leg, which now lay a few feet away at the base of the large red smear the creature left behind as it dragged itself forward, Rika dead in its sights. It groaned as it pulled itself across the ground, oblivious to all other things besides its prey.

The same could be said about Rika, though she was more of the predator here than it and was still very much vertical. She chuckled at its pathetic attempts to pull itself along; mindless monsters didn't know when to quit. Didn't it mind that it only had one leg? Did it even realize how hurt it was? Couldn't it feel the pain?

"Fascinating creatures," she muttered, unmoved as it dragged itself forward. In response to its attempts to continue on and fight, Rika raised her gun up again and fired - exploded its shoulder into red paste. One of its arms rolled to the side slightly out of its way, palm up towards the sky, as if grasping at the heavens for mercy.

Amazingly, the abomination didn't quit, merely growled and kept pulling itself along with only one arm. Rika arched her eyebrow, taking aim at its other shoulder. That joint, too, exploded in a splatter of red, swallowing up the monster's groan with the explosion that emanated from the barrel of the weapon. Just for the hell of it, she aimed higher and blasted its other leg off at the thigh.

The ex-human was durable, but not invincible. Just as Rika brought her weapon to bear at the monstrosity's face to put it out of its misery, red spluttered out of its mouth, it made a curious gurgling noise, and its head flopped forward into the dirt. Some of the bubbling red leaked out of its mouth and seeped into the barren soil.

Rika crouched down next to it, poking it in the head with the barrel of her weapon, displacing some of the stiff brown hairs on its head. It didn't move. She smiled, eyes half-lidded, as if reflecting on a distant memory. "He looks like Keiichi."

Behind her, Hanyuu bore a confused expression. She reluctantly drifted nearer to take a closer look at the limbless corpse, meekly about to point out that their hair _did_ look slightly similar-

-just before she shrieked bloody murder. Namely because the creature's head exploded before her very eyes and sent chunks of skull and sticky brain flying through her face. _"Rika!"_

Rika chuckled darkly, standing upright and blowing off the tip of her weapon theatrically. She didn't bother with the speckles of red on her face and dress. "Get used to it," she said calmly, casually turning around to walk back to the grounded limo, dropping an empty magazine behind her. "You're going to be seeing a lot of that for a while."

Hanyuu looked torn between submitting to this grim conclusion and throwing a fit from disgust and horror. "Th-that...wasteful, Rika. A-a waste of am-m-mo..."

"I don't care."

And that was the end of that.

Not surprisingly, the sound of the Desert Eagle had been sufficient enough noise to wake up the dozing inhabitants of the limo, all of whom were crawling out of the car, alert yet drowsy. Shion was quick to assess the condition of her car, the exact nature of which horrified her; combine all the scratches, dents, holes, and the dried film of stinking bile that had since dried across the entire front of the vehicle, it was pretty much a lost cause. At the very least was the fact that it was out of gas. "Holy shit!"

Keiichi rolled his shoulders and leaned his head to the side to crack his neck, back no doubt stiff from sleeping in a car the whole time. "It's just a car, Shion..."

"Just a car!" she spat, as if he'd uttered some kind of unforgivable curse worthy of execution. "Just a- this is not 'just a car,' Keiichi Maebara! This is-"

"A scrap heap," Rika deadpanned, tapping the dangling bumper with the toe of her sandal; the insignificant nudge was enough to knock the metal part free and bring it clattering to the ground. "Rena's dug things out of the junkyard that looked better than this thing."

"And you!" Shion fumed, stabbing a finger at the purple-haired girl, coming around the (scrap heap) car in question. "Just what do you think you're doing, up and getting out of the car like that? You're supposed to stick with the group!"

Rika regarded Shion's lecture with disinterest, opening the car door to get into the ammo stockpile...then stepped back quickly to avoid the door landing on her toe as it fell off its hinges and clattered noisily to the ground. After a second of scrutinizing, Rika looked up to Shion and informed her, "Scrap heap."

"Forget the car!" Shion bellowed - which wasn't the tune she was whistling a little while to. "I'm talking about you, you, you- wandering off! In the middle of zombie _fucking _apocalypse! What the hell is wrong with you? Do you _want _to get killed?"

Rika rolled her eyes, climbing into the car through the now permanently-open door, looking for the bag with spare magazines in it for her empty gun. "Whatever."

Met with such passive disregard, Shion couldn't reply. She made a few noises as she tried to come up with how to vocalize her anger, however disproportionate it may be, and gave up, now turning around and kicking rocks and muttering curses to the heavens and everything under them.

Rika emerged from the car with pockets full of magazines that she decided were close enough to fit in her own's chamber. As she fit one into the appropriate space, she glanced at her katana, going over a mental image of how she'd swap weapons out in a quick, fluid motion. She also double-checked the holster the gun came with, which was disproportionately large for her own body size and out of place against her green dress. Fashion never really had much of a place in her mind, so it didn't bother her.

Rika was pretty much over it, but Keiichi regarded her distastefully. "She's right, though. You shouldn't wander off. It's not safe."

"Sue me."

Keiichi's eyebrow quirked irritably. Rena appeared at his side, looking oddly natural the way she held her M16. "You know," she said, sounding unnaturally accusing, "your attitude's been getting worse and worse since we started. Rena doesn't like it. Rena thinks Rika-chan needs to snap out of it."

Keiichi nodded in agreement. "Seriously, what happened to you? You were really nice up until-"

"All this?" Rika finished, opening her arms to the surrounding wasteland around them. "Yeah. _That's _what happened."

"Rena misses the old Rika-chan. She does."

Rika chuckled bitterly. "I suggest getting over it; that girl's been dead longer than any of you have been alive."

She then walked away, pacing slowly around the length of the trashed limousine as she inspected her weapon. Rena and Keiichi gave each other a look, but said nothing of it. They also backed up to allow their friend room to walk in circles around the battered vehicle.

As soon as Shion finished venting what was likely more than just the frustration from the last five minutes (coping was coping, after all), she returned from her rock-kicking expedition and assumed a more leader-like role, sounding off orders that basically reiterated the obvious: collect the ammo, collect the first-aid kits, get your guns ready, blah blah blah. Everything any idiot should already know to do.

As Shion played drill sergeant, Rika was muttering quietly to herself...or rather, to Hanyuu. "We need somewhere to go. We're not going to make it out on the highway like this; we need a destination. Somewhere we can scavenge supplies. Anything will do. Got it?"

Hanyuu nodded with a determined expression. "I'm on it."

As her ethereal counterpart flew away, Rika listened in with mild interest on the others as she paced around their ruined ride.

"Alright, people!" Definitely Shion. "We've got meds to support us, bellies to fill, and shit to shoot! Let's start getting some plans together here!"

"Uh..." A shuffling of feet; Keiichi looking around. "There's nothing here, Shion. Where are we, anyway? Didn't you say you were taking us to Okinomiya?"

"Ahaha, that..." Shion rubbing the back of her head. "Yeah, funny story...I was _going _to go there, and I kinda...uh...couldn't find the right exit, so..."

A smacking sound; probably Keiichi facepaming himself. "We're lost."

"We're not lost! We're just, uh..."

"Out in the middle of nowhere with no sense of direction whatsoever. You're right, that's _much _better."

"U-um..." Definitely Rena now. "Rena thinks that we should start looking for landmarks..."

"And a map."

"We don't have a map."

"What do you mean we don't have a-"

A crumpling noise; if Rika recalled correctly, that particular piece of paper had been sitting under the severed zombie arm that had, apparently, been leaking small amounts of blood the entire time it was in the car. It now looked more like an exotic artwork of some kind with plenty of torn edges and lots of brownish red.

"...crap."

"So yeah, we're kind of fucked with that. Start looking for landmarks, people!"

"Uh-huh, yeah." More shuffling feet as Keiichi looked. "Let's see, I see a rock, another rock...more rocks...there's this big highway...oh, and then there's some heat waves. You know, the kind that are _baking me alive _over here._"_

"Mm...Keiichi barbeque. Pass the ketchup."

A giggle from Rena.

"Sh-shut up!"

"We could always try that big traffic jam over there," Rika informed them, pointing down the road. "It's about half a mile thataway...gonna have to walk a bit."

Keiichi and Rena blinked at one another; Shion halted in mid-sentence and squinted down the road, trying to see it. The heat waves' distortion of the air, however, made observation impossible. "...I don't see anything. You sure that's not a mirage?"

Rika nodded patiently, though she was already setting off in that direction. "You went that way and then drifted back down here when we were driving; it's uphill slightly. Probably why you can't see it."

Keiichi scratched his head. "When was that?"

"After Shion started snoring."

There were a few snickers, plus a bit of Shion's grumblings, though she couldn't excuse the big red mark on her forehead shaped perfectly like the top-most bar on a steering wheel. Though they never quite received their "leader's" consent, everyone acknowledged this as their best bet and started up the road after Rika. Always the bottom of the pecking order, Keiichi got stuck with carrying the heavy ammo bag, though Rena had mercy on him and carried his weapon and med pack for him. Shion took position up front, M16 propped up, chin raised and shoulders back in a proud, leader-ly position. She always got a kick out of being in charge.

Rika didn't feel it particularly mattered. She was the best equipped among them, namely because no one else had an ethereal scout floating happily beside them.

* * *

Shion constantly reminded Keiichi that she was a better driver than him. However, Rika had a feeling that Keiichi wouldn't have been so dim as to drive them out into the proud country of Bupkiss, Nowhere; population: four.

Back in Hinamizawa, the sky seemed to constantly be a flawless screen of blue, and out here was no exception. However, unlike Hinamizawa, the sun that constantly beamed down had no trees to block its radiance, which turned this barren, out-of-the-way patch of highway into one big, steaming desert, fully equipped with bleached gravel, merciless heat, and enough misery to classify this place as Hell on earth. All that was missing was the tumbleweed.

There was nothing - literally, _nothing - _out here. No animals, no birds, no insects...not even the undead-yet-not were daring enough to come out here and stumble around, though they eventually did find a car on the side of the road that was most likely owned by the two now double-dead people Rika had wasted earlier. Apart from that, not a single creature - dead or undead - could be found. It really was like they'd all died and gone to Hell: a scenario Rika was starting to find more and more plausible.

It was miserable walking. The heat was unbearable; all four of them were sweating rivers behind them, and if it kept up and they didn't shrivel up into prunes, they could swim the rest of the way.

"Oh my god," Keiichi whined, wiping his brow with a sticky hand. "This is torture. I'm baking alive over here."

"Keiichi-kun said that earlier," Rena said, poking him lightly on the ribs; she tried to smile, but there was no hiding her misery under the shadow of her beret. "Is Keiichi-kun done baking yet? Is he?"

"Yeah really," Shion called back with a weary laugh. "I'm getting hungry over here!"

There were a few chuckles, but not that many. Most of their stomachs did well to silence them.

More time passed, and the weary optimism evaporated like any possible water in the area. Rika heard the grumbles for a few minutes, but only Shion and her short temper vocalized her thoughts loud enough for her to hear: "Dude, this is the longest half-mile of my fucking life. Are you sure there's anything up here?"

Rika cast a look over to Hanyuu, who nodded encouragingly. "Yes. Just a little further." Or at least, so Hanyuu informed her; Rika herself was having a hard time staying determined, but Hanyuu seemed sure enough...

Shion muttered something under her breath and resumed walking in relative silence. No one said anything and resigned them all to suffering quietly.

The misery was as consistent as their reluctant strides forward. Looking ahead, all that was visible was the ripple of the mirage that seemed to stretch on into infinity. This, however, was deceiving: just as it was impossible to see where they were going, it was impossible to gauge how close they were to their destination until, without warning, they arrived.

As promised, dozens of cars and trucks crammed together in the road, only just sheparded by the barriers along the sides of the road. Every model and make of vehicle imaginable lay out in the sun to simmer, heat rolling off of them like invisible flames from a fire. An overturned semi determined the origin of the pileup farther ahead, which had turned this section of road into a death trap. Judging by the blood present in some of the seats and on the ground, this analogy wasn't entirely inaccurate.

Shion let out a noise as they approached. "That's a shit-load of cars."

"See?" Rika said back, already stepping ahead of the rest of the group. "Told you." She spoke confidently enough, though she gave Hanyuu an apologetic look, guilty for doubting her. "...thanks. You did a good job."

Hanyuu beamed, pleased with her accomplishment. Already she was drifting up to the nearest car, vanishing as she slipped into their interiors to see what they had to offer as far as supplies.

Rena didn't look so pleased. She stuck close to Keiichi, hands resting on his arm as they passed by a few cars that had pulled onto the side of the road, likely to try and squeeze past the other cars. All of the vehicles they saw had dents, scratches, and cracked or totally smashed windows. A few were even flipped onto their sides and showed evidence of flames once upon a time. "All the doors are open," she observed quietly, hanging on a little tighter to the weapns and med packs under her arms. "Where are all the drivers, Keiichi-kun? Where?"

Keiichi stammered, floundering as he tried coming up with a positive answer to a clearly un-positive situation. "Maybe...they all left when they got rescued?"

Rena looked hopeful, and his reply seemed to satisfy her well enough. Rika, however, merely shook her head and muttered to herself as she bent down to peer at the inside of an overturned car. That red and gray lump there was most likely the driver, she surmised...or at least, it _had _been. "That's one theory..."

Everyone pretty much shut up after that, devoting all effort into digging through car interiors for anything good their previous owners may have left behind. They were all either out of gas or totaled to the point of inoperability, so Shion's attempts at hot-wiring a nice-looking van or car here and there were in vain. It was all well and good, though; she couldn't hot-wire for shit anyway. Rika was probably better than her, and it'd been a hundred worlds since she'd done it last. Even if it was possible, they were still walking. _Amateur..._

Having an extra pair of eyes working for her was pretty nice. Whereas everyone else jumped from car to car, digging through every vehicle she could find with a large margin for error, Rika stopped at certain cars at seemingly random intervals and emerged with something every time. Already she'd gathered more than the others combined: Shion had found a trunk with a single blanket, Rena had a pair of lucky die she declared "adowable," and Keiichi a box of rubber gloves, all of which he was expected to carry (naturally). As for Rika, in the course of about twenty minutes (she had zero perception of time at this point) both Hanyuu and Rika (mostly Hanyuu) had uncovered spare medical kits, tape, flashlights, spare batteries, assorted foods end preservatives from the cars with groceries, a packet of water bottles, and a pair of backpacks full of art supplies for a third grader. Rika dumped one, kept some paper and pencils in the other, and did her best to stock both of them as full as she could. She then returned to the group to enjoy her bragging rights...and, of course, drop her finds off on Keiichi. He reluctantly accepted the burden, though on the grounds that he only had to bear the full weight while they searched for supplies. His terms were agreed to, and the temporary pack mule sat down to catch his breath and alleviate the pain in his back.

Poor guy. Rika actually came up to him in the shade of the car he'd leaned up against, reaching up to his head to give him a few pats, like he was a cat. "There there," she cooed in a familiar, innocent tone. "I bet all that stiff-y soreness is going away now, isn't it?"

Keiichi seemed taken aback for a moment; Rika was about to whip out the famous "Nipaa!" line when he chuckled, rubbing the back of his head a bit. "H-heh...thanks, Rika-chan. I feel better already."

Rena wasn't far off, and she returned to Keiichi's side to drop off a pair of adowable sunglasses...paused, then placed them over Keiichi's eyes. "Look what I found, Keiichi-kun, what I found!"

Keiichi blinked as he adjusted his eyes to the sunglasses that were a bit too large for him. "Uh...that's nice, Rena, but they're too big..."

"I-I can fix it!" she insisted quickly, pulling them off his head to start squeezing either side to bend them a bit. But, they were pretty cheap sunglasses, so instead of bending, the nose piece simply snapped in half. Rena let out a wail. "Ahhhh! Rena broke them - broke them! I'm sorry, Keiichi-kun!"

Keiichi laughed - Rena was always easily flustered. "It's okay," he insisted, patting her on the head not unlike Rika did to him. "It's fine! I'm glad you found something for me. It's the thought that counts."

Rena's cheeks were aflame, and it wasn't from sunburn. "Is it okay, Keiichi-kun?" she asked innocently, looking at him with wide eyes. "R-Rena thought they'd look cool on you, and she broke them...is Rena forgiven?"

Keiichi smiled that charming smile of his. "Absolutely. Theres no way I can stay mad at you."

Rena smiled, letting out a small giggle as she looked down shyly, murmuring her thanks. This was usually where the exchange ended, but Keiichi's hand remained, fingers continuing to drift through her curly brunette hair as Rena continued to sit there at his side. Her eyes eased closed a little as she sat there, apparently content with the attention.

Rika watched with a combination of envy and curiosity. Before her eyes she saw Rena scooting a little bit closer, and while this could be dismissed as her desire to huddle more into the shade at the foot of the sideways semi car, Rika suspected alterior motives. Quiet and observing, she was still as she watched Rena crawl a little bit closer, and closer...up until she was right up against him, nudging her head against his hand, encouraging him. Since it was at a little awkward angle, Keiichi switched hands and brought his arm around her shoulder for easier access. She scooted up closer to him and rested her head on his shoulder, closing her eyes.

The sight was heartwarming to say the least. Rika herself was biting her lip, remaining motionless so she wouldn't be noticed, trying to resist bursting out into a fit of giggles over the fight and the way Hanyuu kept gushing over it, alternating between "Awww!" and "Hauuu!" repeatedly. Personally, Rika thought they made a nice couple. They were definitely cute enough, and a charming guy with a sensitive girl tended to make a nice pair...yes, Rika approved of this. It was sweet to watch them.

It was nice to be able to see something cute for a change...or, as Rena would say, "adowable."

Biting back chuckles became that much more difficult. Rika subtly made her way to the side and made herself scarce to grant the "lovebirds" some space (though at this point, there was no stopping Hanyuu's swooning).

Seeing as she might as well get back to work, Rika looked briefly around for Shion, didn't see her immediately, and didn't feel like breaking out into a search for her. So instead she went back to looting cars, though this time by herself instead of having Hanyuu do the looking for her. Might as well earn her own keep, right?

It wasn't long into searching that Rika popped open a trunk by jamming the lock with a hair clip. She stared at the interior of the car for a moment...kept staring, eyes wide with shock and awe. "...no way."

In the trunk of the car was a big box of what would probably be very warm beer. And there was one can left.

Thanking the gods for her luck, Rika snatched up the can without hesitation, looking warily around for any witnesses. She didn't see any, but all the same, she ducked around the car she discovered this rare treasure at, looked one more time, and dared to pull the tab back until it let out a crack as the seal was broken. After that, it was merely a matter of throwing back her head and enjoying the sour, sun-heated concoction that contained her precious alcohol.

Just as she was leaning the can up to pour the smelly liquid down her throat, Rika stopped. She sat there a moment, listening...there was nothing there now, but just a second ago, she could have sworn she heard laughing...

Perplexed, she stood up from her crouched position and peered through the smashed window of the car she was behind to see the other side. Shion was climbing up onto the top of a car, putting a hand up to block the sun so she could look to see how far the crashed cars went. Rena was clamoring away from where Keiichi was, ducking down a moment before scurrying back with a bottle of water in her hands, likely for Keiichi. Rika caught a glimpse of one of Hanyuu's horns as she flitted about, trying to get a good angle to look at them. None of them seemed to be laughing...and it didn't quite sound like any of their voices. Too male to be Rena or Hanyuu, too high to be Keiichi. Was there someone else here? Or was she just hearing things..?

_Maybe I really am goi0ng crazy,_ Rika thought, smiling humorlessly. Dismissing it as her imagination, Rika turned back around to chug her nasty-as-shit-but-still-alcoholic beverage-

-and heard the laughing again. This time much clearer, more defined, and indisputably maniacal...directly in front of her.

She never saw it coming. She heard the crazy giggles and saw a blur before something grabbed her, wrapping its gangly arms around her shoulders with its stomach in her face, slamming her into the car behind her and sending her beer can flying. Its shirt was worn and reeked of must, and she knew immediately that it was another one of the zombies. A peculiar form that laughed and laughed, but a zombie nonetheless.

_Fuck._

Rika screamed into its midsection, but her voice was muffled from the musty shirt covering it up, then further swallowed up by the creature's incessant cackling. It yanked her forward, freeing her back from the blistering hot metal car, only to drag her down and bring her to the ground, where the stifling heat from the pavement was free to press against the skin of her arms and legs. Rika struggled and continued to thrash madly, screaming all the while, trying to let someone - _anyone - _know where she was. Her hands grasped wildly for her sword, but the blade was too long to pull out at her current angle, and the way the creature kept yanking and pulling on her head made it difficult to do much but flail crazily, screaming into its stomach. Her plight only seemed to amuse the insane creature even more, and its voice cracked at the strain being put on it.

This proved to be its downfall; while anyone could tell it wasn't Rika, they could definitely tell it was _something, _and the magnitude of its calls could have attracted any of them from half a mile away. Someone eventually did come along after a few long, painful seconds, and they were quick to place a foot in the creature's jaw, which caused its laughter to falter and gave Rika a chance to get up and scramble away, backing up madly and slamming into the side of the car from her vigor. The impact knocked the air out of her with an "oof!".

Payback was swiftly delivered, and Rika's savior - a rather pissed-looking Shion - leveled her gun at the insane little hunchback thing, drowning its laughter out with a swarm of bullets. The long-armed freak stumbled backwards, hit a car, and could do nothing but twitch and flail and laugh as holes appeared all across its body and in the car behind it, pinned by the weight of the volley. By the time Shion's clip ran dry, the creature was nothing more than a twitching mound of bloody tissue and elongated limbs. Its skin around its lips were peeled back like an apple's, causing its dead stare across the ground to be a sickly, bloody sneer. It didn't take the opportunity to get the last laugh in.

Keiichi and Rena swooped in at this point, drawn by the noise, and gawked at the sight. "Holy shit!" Keiichi blurted. "What happened? What the hell is _that?"_

"Crazy zombies," Rika gasped, out of breath from all the screaming and having the wind knocked out of her. Her legs and knees, plus the insides of her hands, were starting to turn an unpleasant shade of pink from the exposure to the hot pavement; she was standing now, as her rear was being exposed to the very same blisters she was sure she would have. "Great...now even the..._zombies _are going crazy..."

Always the nurturing one, Rena quickly descended to Rika's side, hands gently on her shoulders. "Are you okay, Rika-chan? Are you?"

Hanyuu materialized next to her, petrified expression bearing the very same question, though ridden with a few more "hau"s.

Rika waved them both off; her heart was pounding and her knees felt like they were on fire, but she was fine. Just a little shaken up. "I'm fine, j-just...scared me, is all. I'm fine."

Shion scoffed distastefully at the mangled figure of the now even more mangled zombie on the ground, red starting to trickle away from its hole-ridden corpse. "Things gettin' more screwed up every day..."

Whether she was referring to the zombies or things in general was uncertain, but Rika heartily agreed either way. She she never did find out where her beer went. Probably just as well; she didn't know what other un-human things had tapped into it before she stumbled on it.

* * *

They decided to wrap it up shortly after that. The pileup site appeared to be abandoned at a glance, but after a little while of loitering around, more and more zombies started to trickle in, and it wasn't long before climbing over vehicles became a hazard none of them could afford to do alone; more inhuman things seemed to be waiting for them at every turn. What had started out as a mere scavenging expedition was turning out to be a trip through a mangled steel obstacle course full of monsters.

Under the circumstances, it was best not to stick around. They had enough supplies anyway - enough water to last them, and a little food to stave them over until they found a better source. As per their agreement, everyone helped out and took a share of the gathered materials so poor Keiichi didn't have to carry it all. Shion and Rena took a backpack each while Rika made use of a knapsack Hanyuu found for her laying in a car seat; Keiichi didn't have a choice but to take a purse and gut it so he could carry a few things himself. They then put their med packs on the straps they'd prepared at the Sonozaki estate over their shoulders, gathered their weapons, holstered their sidearms, and started to work their way up the wreckage site.

Said wreckage proved to be even larger than they had originally thought. Shion took a running leap onto a car's hood, then followed up by jumping onto the hood of a grounded semi, running up onto its trailer and looking off down the street. "Jesus," she muttered, then called back, "These abandoned cars go on for miles! Look!"

Everyone climbed up to see for themselves, and sure enough, a carpet of mangled and roughed up car bodies of every shape and size imaginable lay out in a neat column to connect with the blurry ripples that obscured the horizon. It was like every car in Japan had ended up on this road and crashed together at some point.

"Must have been one of the evacuation routes," Keiichi surmised, looking thoughtful at the lane-packed cars that stretched on as far as the eye could see and the heat would allow. "Traffic got thick, then the zombies started picking them off. Poor bastards didn't stand a chance."

Rena looked pale. "How many are there, Keiichi-kun...how many?"

Keiichi shook his head grimly and didn't respond. Rika did for him: "Too many."

No one challenged this conclusion.

There were areas of wider space where a blocked semi provided a gap in the traffic for a few meters, but the rest of the road was crammed with twisted and overturned vehicles, windows smashed and seats lined with crisp blood stains. A few had bodies that had started to decay in the sweltering heat, turning the cars into ovens with wheels, but not many. Most of them were empty, their passengers carried off...or worse.

"Why didn't they eat these ones?" Shion inquired suddenly, gesturing to a body that was slumped over at the wheel. "Their heads aren't even open. Don't zombies eat brains?"

"These things don't fit the stereotypical zombie," Rika reminded. "They run; they climb things. I haven't seen a single one show any interest in eating the people they capture. And you don't have to shoot them in the head to kill them; any sufficient damage anywhere will kill one."

The group halted as Shion discharged a trio of shots from her M16; after a brief pause, she fired again, then continued walking. "Well, if they're not zombies, what are they?"

Rika shrugged. "Maybe they're infected with something. Some kind of virus. You see the movies, right?"

"Well, yeah, but this isn't really a movie..."

"Too fucked up for the big screen."

Everyone nodded in agreement. No way they could argue with that.

They walked on in silence for a little while, stopping to climb over some cars ahead of them. Once more did Shion raise her rifle and squeeze off a few shots, causing a lone form on top of a car six cars away to stumble, then fall to the ground. Another one of them came running, attracted by the noise, and Shion put it down as well. There was a brief pause before Shion continued ahead, gun ready, looking for confirmation for kills.

Not long after she did, a trio of bodies came scrambling over the cars, arms flailing and emitting snarling and shrieking noises. A small group came scrambling behind them, zooming in on the foursome ahead of them, and even more were on the way.

Shion swore, yelling back, "Here they come!" before firing once again. Three more guns discharged, firing over her shoulder.

M16 shots made the front row stumble and stagger, buckshot tickling their midsections as well-placed slugs from a Desert Eagle blew chunks of them into the air that rained back down like grotesque confetti. Bullets that found their heads proved that while they were eager enough, the zombies' (or whatever they were) heads were even more vulnerable than their human counterparts, demonstrated in the way their skulls seemed to shatter and fly apart under the might of the rounds that entered them. Brain fragments pattered across car hoods as their corpses dropped like bags of potatoes, either from gravity or from being shoved aside by their cohorts. Though their casualties were adding up, the horde was unfazed, rushing forward recklessly and forcing the line to grow steadily closer. The corpses were no more than an extra obstacle to climb over.

Seeing as she had to reload the most, Rika took up the initiative at the advancing line and slid down the back of the car they'd rooted down on, fitting neatly in the space from four bumpers meeting and holding the vehicles apart. She then holstered her Desert Eagle and pulled out her katana; the blade gave a satisfying metal-on-metal sound as it was pulled from its sheath, glassy blade causing a shimmer as it was whipped around and brought out to bear. The weapon was comically disproportionate for its comparatively small user, and the one-handed weapon had to be gripped with two hands just to be held steady. It was more of a claymore to Rika than anything else.

The line of undead approached, despite the waves of bullets, and while Keiichi's shotgun blasts proved most effective at this range, the creatures were almost upon them, the whites of their glassy, post-mortum eyes reflecting eerily in the dim light in their receded sockets. When the first pair of scrambling legs came within range, Rika swung, providing the virgin blade its first stain of red across its flawless length. She expected resistance, but was happily rewarded with the sickly slashing noise and a trio of dismembered legs that flopped uselessly around her, two undead smashing their faces into the car they'd been trying to reach and quickly put out of their misery by ensuring gunfire. Another swing rewarded her with another pair of legs, then another three, then four more, and so on. The horde, while determined and numerous, was unable to lay a single clawed finger on any of the trio, though one of them did get a good kick to Rika's face when it went to climb over the wall of bodies and dismembered limbs building up in front of her and decided her head was a nice stepping stone. She then ducked down into the gap between the bumpers with her little fort of dead bodies above her to shield her until the conflict was over.

After a few seconds, the gunfire ceased. One more shot was squeezed off, a gurgling noise ensured as a straggler was put down, and the horde was effectively decimated.

Rika called out from the mini-tomb she'd been encased in, discovering unpleasantly that the bodies over her were too heavy for her to move and were starting to drip fermenting bodily fluids down on her hair and face. After some struggling, Rika was pulled out of the bloody mound by Shion, then brushed off by Keiichi; Rena used her already ruined white dress as a glorified rag to wipe her face of blood. Fortunately (or not; she was still deciding on that part), none of it was hers. All she had was a headache and a footprint embedded on top of her head.

After a shared sigh of relief, everyone took a brief moment to reload, bring out their appropriate main weapon, and assure no one was hurt before they went about stepping over the carpet of bloody corpses they'd laid out across the bullet-strewn cars, a few extra layers of red added to their shoes as they went. Rika took this opportunity to curse her decision to wear open-toed sandals.

The horde seemed to have collected up any strays that were walking around, as the next few hundred meters were all but completely clear of any zombies. There was a there was a green cloud of smoke inside a car with a dark shape in the middle, and brief investigation (namely in the form of bullets) revealed the mass to be none other than one of the long-tongued variations of the undead encountered beforehand. Shion took particular pleasure in unloading a few extra rounds into it than necessary, though the faceful of green smoke she got in the face from the creature's death provided the zombie the last laugh. After her hacking fit, a wide berth was given the car in question as they moved around it.

While no one was hurt, nerves were running thin, the temperature continued to run high, and the steady trickle of undead they were constantly engaging with was enough to wear anyone out. They were dirty, sweaty, speckled with blood, and probably sunburned beyond recognition from all this sun. Needless to say that when a shape in the distance that was too large to be a car popped out of the haze ahead, they took to it eagerly.

And their reward for the hard work they'd put in: a gas station, sitting lonely and dejected on the side of the road, its only company a few staggering zombies that mumbled and grunted idly to themselves as they walked mindlessly around. There was a big "OUT OF GAS" sign stamped across the usual price board, but no one really minded; they didn't have a car to put the gas in anyway, so it was no big deal. After a brief shared look of hope, the group unanimously agreed to pick off what undead were around and take shelter.

Shion rushed forward, coming to a stop at the door, which had big wooden planks nailed over it to shield the glass. She peered through the gaps in the boards, looking into the dark interior that, for the most part, seemed relatively uninhabited. "Place looks abandoned. Shop keeper must have packed up when they ran out of gas."

There was a single shotgun blast before Keiichi backed around the corner, slipping a shell into his auto-shotgun and wiping his brow. "Yeah, well, I doubt the owner'll mind if we pop in for a while."

Shion smirked. "My thoughts exactly."

Rena looked uneasy, looking at the barricaded door, then at all the windows across the length of the station, seeing nothing but boards reinforcing the glass in on the other side. "How do we get in? We don't have a key, and the windows are blocked..."

Shion snickered, turning her gun around in her hands. "Easily remedied."

Rena was about to ask what she meant when Shion enlightened her, namely by smashing the butt of her rifle into the glass, shattering it. She then knocked a small space free of any broken shards, reached her arm through, and popped open the door, which jingled as it was opened. "Viola."

Rena still looked troubled at this. Rika merely chuckled at her, muttering something about an "innocent mind" before following Shion and Keiichi inside. Rena didn't pause for long before hurrying after them.

The inside of the gas station was pitch black, slivers of light filtering past the boards lining all the windows. Fortunately, everyone still had their flashlights, which Shion had suggested taping to the barrels of their guns using the duct tape Rika had found, providing a nice source of illumination paired with the safety of their gunsights. Thus the group used their own weapons as torches as they shuffled past aisles of messily-placed food bags and containers, miscellaneous debris, and a single corpse strewn across the counter. Shion didn't ask why there was a bullet hole in his head, nor did she - or anyone else - really care. Instead, she removed the set of keys from his person, found a likely spot behind the counter, and filled the room with light. "Tadaa!"

Rika clicked off her flashlight, fingering the features of her gun's barrel as she looked around at the gas station interior. The place was messy, obviously recently abandoned, and lined with orange notice fliers of some kind or another. The coolers were shattered and generally empty, but cool air continued to drift out of them, and the lights overhead confirmed the presence of electricity still working here. She suspected a generator. "Not bad."

Keiichi nodded, looking around himself with a thoughtful expression. "Needs a little touching up, but it beats outside. Right, Shion?"

Shion didn't reply, still digging around in the back beneath the counter. There was a clicking noise, a sound of jingling keys, and a whirring in the ceiling before, like directly from God Himself, cool air began to waft through the vents in the ceiling, instantly drying some of the trails of sweat lining their faces and necks.

"Hallelujah," Shion breathed, draping her upper half across the counter in a similar manner as the body of the shop owner. She cast the body a displeased look, then shoved the corpse clean off the counter. "Back off, Jack: this is _my _corner of heaven."

And heaven it was: after walking and fighting and shooting and digging through cars in one hundred plus-degree heat and blistering sunlight without rest, the trickles of cold, frosty air was like a slap of aloe vera across their weary, sunburned bodies. Air conditioning after a million-mile march through Hell on earth was, literally, like taking a vacation to heaven. It was glorious.

Everyone found a nice place to lounge underneath an air vent for a while, indulging themselves in the sweet, sweet air as their bodies cooled. As soon as Rika felt her skin wasn't hot enough to fry an egg anymore, she rose up off the floor, staying under the line of cooling vents as she started to look around, then pay attention to one of the orange notices tapped up across every square inch of the wall.

Rika pulled one off the wall, reading the text and raising an eyebrow at it, obviously scrutinizing its authenticity and overall usefulness. "'Report unusual behavior,'" she read aloud, attracting looks from her companions. "'Barricade your homes...avoid all contact with infected individuals...'"

"Infected?" Keiichi repeated, cocking his head to the side in question. "So this thing is an infection after all?"

Shion waved her hand lazily through the air, now laying across the counter on her back. "Does it really matter what the fuck they are? Just shoot 'em if they act funny and smell bad."

"So you mean I should shoot you?"

Keiichi received a pack of cigarettes to the head for his wise-crack remark.

Rika narrowed her eyes, reading the last line at the bottom of the notice paper over a few times before speaking it. "'...wait for official instructions.'" She scowled, like the phrase left a bad taste in her mouth. "...official instructions. _What _official instructions? Instructions to pray? And who the blazes is CEDA?"

Keiichi arched an eyebrow at this revelation. "'CEDA'? Who's that? Are they the good guys?"

Rika shrugged, crumpling the paper and tossing it aside. "Never heard of them. Probably some government branch or something."

"Well _that's _suspicious," Shion said, looking upside-down from her spot on the counter. Her green hair stretched messily down to the floor from her barely-intact ponytail. "Some random government bunch show up in the middle of zombie apocalypse, nobody knowing who they are or anything about them? Just randomly popping up and taking charge?'" She scoffed, rolling her eyes at the floor. "Sound like a shady bunch to me. I don't trust them."

"You haven't even seen them," Keiichi countered. "How can you judge someone who you haven't even met yet?"

"Maybe if they actually showed up in Hinamizawa to save everyone, I'd be able to meet them and not like them _then."_

"Maybe they're part of the Defense Force," Rena tried, attempting to give this CEDA group a chance. "Some civil emergency branch...like a backup army!"

"That'd explain all the posters everywhere."

"And their sudden appearance."

Rika continued to frown, following the numerous posters along the walls with increasing distaste; all the quarantine signs and warnings of "infection" and the vague general measures they should take to "protect themselves" did nothing to comfort her. "All the signs say to wait," she said. "Wait...for what?"

"Rescue?"

"Or a firing squad."

Rena cast a sharp glare at the counter. "Shion!"

"Hey, I'm just saying," Shion protested, hands going up...or down, given her position. "If it was me, I'd think it would be easier just to say 'fuck it' with all the infected regions and save the people that aren't being exposed. That way, this 'infection' or whatever will be less likely to spread."

"Are you insinuating," Rika said in a low voice, "that we've all been left for dead?"

Shion shrugged nonchalantly. "It'd explain why we've never seen this CEDA-bunch. And why they never came to Hinamizawa. _And_ why they're not here right now. Think about it: this is a major highway. Wouldn't you think there would at least be patrols going around to prevent that scene out there from happening? Wouldn't you imagine that sort of thing happening on its own?"

Her query was met with quiet. She received no response, bar nervous glances.

She continued casually, sounding oddly at ease with the whole thing. "Seems to be more than just a coincidence that we haven't even seen traces of rescue efforts in this entire area. They'd be just as likely to line us up against a wall and shoot us because we're exposed than to go through all the effort of disinfecting us and dragging us into wherever they're holding up; too much work, not enough payout. Much easier just to drop off potential infected into a quarantine bin and toss them in the incinerator than to try and save them all."

An ominous silence descended on the group as the potential truth to Shion's theory - and the exact gravity of their situation - started to sink in. It was then that all of them fully realized that help never coming at all was a very, very real possibility.

"...that can't be," Rena said, voice small and fearful. "They can't do that...all those people. They can't just...abandon them...they can't!" Her determination shriveled up as soon as her voice fell, and she looked with a frightened look to Keiichi at her side. "...can they?"

Keiichi opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out. The Magician of Words fell painfully, dreadfully silent.

Rika bore a sober expression. She turned slowly to the ethereal ghost that floated by with wide eyes, hands together, as if praying for guidance. "Wh...what do we do now, Rika?"

Rika was silent for a moment longer, looking distant as she considered their situation. After a short pause, the only thing that left her mouth was in a dark mutter: "I think we're going to need a change of plans."

* * *

**_AN:_**

Dun dun dunnnnnnnnn... :O

Major points if you got the "left for dead" bit in there near the end. A hump from a Jockey if you did not. D:

Well, I seem to be getting a feel back for this style of writing again. Now that I've gotten into the swing of thing, you can expect more epic battles with the infected as they survivors move along! :D

Thanks to my two reviewers: glad you guys didn't forget about me. Let's hear it for more zombie apocalypse~! HIP HIP- BRAAAAAAAAINS... :D

_~The Librarian_


	6. U Turn

**Chapter 6**

**U-Turn**

* * *

A lot of plans started to circulate around after they settled into the gas station. Naturally, their first initial desire was to nestle down and weather the storm, but the decision not to have faith in this anonymous "CEDA" dictated this plan obsolete. Even if they weren't waiting for rescue, there was still support for staying here, if nothing else than to collect their bearings, get some rest, and give the zombies some time to slowly starve to death, get weaker, and eventually start decaying more so they could defend themselves more readily. However, this idea was also dismissed as foolish; there had been no evidence of the infected (which was their apparent official term) eating their prey beforehand, and several messages and notes scribbled on some of the walls from other people who had passed through here at one time were all incredulous of this as well. They didn't eat, they didn't sleep...what kept them going? What drove them? If it wasn't for food, why did they keep going on, and what was behind them to keep them from falling apart? The questions were many, but no one knew. Add on top of this that the infected were slowly starting to change - develop into larger, more deadly forms of "special infected," a few variations of which were posted on some of the CEDA informational posters - and waiting around to give the horde more time to develop and sharpen its fangs was a very, very bad idea indeed. No, they couldn't stay here. They had to leave.

Rika knew this better than anyone. And while Keiichi, Shion, and Rena debated amongst themselves and even broke out into arguments about what their best course of action should be, one wanting to stay while the others always had some other idea that traded out for the other periodically, Rika contributed nothing to these debates, watching from afar as tempers escalated and nerves were strained with a mild expression. You might even say she looked unconcerned.

"You should probably help them," Hanyuu reminded her, undeniably displeased with Rika's apparent lack of interest. "This is important, Rika. I think Keiichi's got the best idea; he says he wants to-"

"It doesn't matter," Rika muttered, turning around and walking away from what was turning out to be a rather heated debate; Shion and Keiichi were practically screaming at each other by now. "We're all dead out here anyway."

Hanyuu looked stunned, then outraged. "So that's it? We came this whole way just to give up now? What happened to that determination to battle fate?"

"You're forgetting something," Rika murmured. She then turned, eying the anger-painted faces and wild gestures from afar. "When's the last time Rena took her medication?"

Hanyuu paused to consider this, looking back at Rena...then looked back to Rika, eyes wide with realization. "...oh my god."

"Yeah." Rika sighed, leaning against the counter that was still covered in dried blood smears. "All three of them were on medications. They were prescribed differently for each of them, but we know what it was for real."

"A sedative. For the syndrome..."

"Which means that unless we get our hands on that sedative in the next two days, we're all going to lose our minds again."

Sharing the pang of fear, both girls shuddered, images of the delusions and involuntary insanity that had been accompanied by Rika's Hinamizawa syndrome becoming active and spiraling out of control. Along with it came some senses and memories that were incredibly unpleasant and most likely bad for their long-term stability. "Hauuuu..." Hanyuu fidgeted in place, squirming with anxiety and nervousness of what could be their fates. "Rikaaaa..."

Rika nodded slowly, placing her hand over her other hand. "I'm scared too, Hanyuu."

"I-I miss Mion...she'd never let the group fall apart...she was always a good leader."

Rika frowned, watching a box go flying through the air where the argument was occurring. "Mion's not here. Which means it's up to us to sort this out."

As Keiichi, Shion, and Rena sorted out their own disagreement and came to terms with the fact that they were never going to figure out what to do at this rate, Rika made herself scarce, sitting down behind the counter and muttering quietly to Hanyuu as they discussed the best way to go about what they planned to do. After a little debate (which was carried out far more civilly than the others, who were now giving one another the cold shoulder), they both agreed that it would be best to wait until they decided to eat so she could talk to all of them while they were together. In the meantime, they should just sit back and enjoy the air conditioning and peace while it lasted; there was a very real possibility that they'd never have a peace quite like this again.

There was a silence for most of the day. The sun continued to smolder the fleet of abandoned cars outside for hours until it decided that it was time to turn in and started to set, forcing the haze of heat outside to dissipate and let the stars start slowly creeping into the sky. Without any street lights or cars going by, the scenery was calm, pitch-black, and deathly silent. The temperature of this arid region dropped as rapidly as the light level did, and it wasn't long before the separated group of friends wordlessly came together to huddle up for heat and the unspoken need for security in the eerie darkness; to avoid attracted extra infected from outside, the lights to the station were turned off, and their only means of illumination - their flashlights and a small fire built out of wooden planks and cardboard boxes - left much to be desired. Even Rika was feeling vulnerable.

And for their five-star dinner: canned beans and a bag of beef jerky for each of them, all warmed up on the fire that barely provided enough heat for any of them. They tried to share the blanket picked up from their scavenging earlier that day, but one for each of them was a tight fit, even if they huddled together. They all sat in a bunch now - Rena in Keiichi's lap while he sat close to Shion, trying to share some warmth and gain a little comfort while they were at it beneath the obviously under-sized blanket spread between them. Despite the conditions, they all looked oddly comfortable.

Rika sat across from them, hugging her knees, staring deeply into the fire that required frequent tending, as the only thing keeping it alight was cardboard and cheap plastic. The flickering orange light made the shadows around them twitch and spasm, adding more to the ominous atmosphere based on the stifling quiet all around.

The three friends huddled together, looking at nothing, saying nothing, doing nothing. Occasionally one of them would tire of sitting in the exact same spot and would shift a little bit, which the others would patiently wait out until they could lock one another in place with their arms again and try to share the warmth together, wishing the fire was just a little bigger. Despite the circumstances, it was probably the closest all three of them had ever been together at any given time in the past.

They had invited Rika over a few times, but she repeatedly denied, who still wanted to remain as much of a "lone wolf" as she could and said she was alright by herself. Really, though, she was a little envious of them. She had Hanyuu's unending support, sure, but she was still human, and a desire for human contact in a time of such otherworldly circumstances was a natural one, loathe to admit it though she may. Her stubbornness was stronger now more than ever, however, and she adamantly resisted.

No one said a word, only occasionally sharing a brief glance before looking back to the fire, still and silent. The silence was thick and unyielding.

Without warning, Rika suddenly spoke up: "We need to go back to Hinamizawa."

Naturally, the others were stunned and thrown off-guard. And, also naturally, all three of them were opposed to the idea. "No way!" Shion snapped. "Are you off your gourd? That place is a nightmare! No way in _hell _am I going back to that place!"

Keiichi was a bit more composed, though still very much unyielding. "No, Rika. There's nothing left there for us. Nothing but infected and...and bad memories." He flinched as an image rose from the back of his mind - one that Rika likely had no desire to see for herself. "...we can't. It's too painful, and...there's nothing left. Hinamizawa's gone, Rika. We have to move on."

Rika shook her head squarely, expression flat. "We can't."

"And why the hell not?" Shion demanded.

"Because if we don't go back there, we're all going to die."

This bold claim was met with what you'd expect: incredulity and disbelief. Shion wasn't afraid with letting Rika know she thought she was full of shit; Keiichi was a bit more diplomatic, but not by much. Rena was silent and stared at Rika with wide, fearful eyes.

Rika didn't relent; in fact, she was completely unmoved by the resistance she was met with. "I'm saying this because of the sickness."

_"What _sickness?"

"I saw something about a green flu on one of the posters," Keiichi said. "If that's what you mean, then don't worry about it: that's the infection. These things all have the green flu."

Rika shook her head. "Not that. I mean the syndrome."

"Syndrome?"

"Hinamizawa syndrome. If we don't get the sedative for it, we'll all lose our minds in two days. Guaranteed."

The response to this was as unbelieving as the last. Shion started to rant about what a lunatic Rika was. Keiichi basically just rolled his eyes and muttered the same thing under his breath. Rena, like before, was silent and just stared, clearly unsure but seemed to be giving the matter some thought.

"Hinamizawa syndrome is the local disease that comes specifically from that area, hence the name," Rika explained, ignoring the protests and insults. "Irie was trying to make a cure for it; right about the time he did, the infection broke out. I thought the two might be related, but after seeing how far the infection's spread, I don't know for sure. It seems like it might not even have anything to do with it. Regardless, we have to go back there; everyone was on some kind of sedative, and if we don't go back on them within the next 48 hours, we'll all develop symptoms of dementia and psychosis and steadily go insane until we kill ourselves."

Patience expended, Keiichi just shook his head and looked off to the side. "You're crazy."

"Off your rocker," Shion agreed. "Next thing you know she'll start saying she can see dead people."

"I see _un_dead people," Rika replied cheekily. "Is that close enough?"

Shion just scoffed and rolled her eyes.

Keiichi tried to discourage Rika now using logic. "Look," he explained. "I don't know what you're thinking, but this whole thing sounds pretty crazy. Granted zombies and everything are crazy, too, but we have proof with that. We can explain it, more or less. With what you're saying, we're just going off your word, and not that we don't trust you, but it sounds...well. Crazy. And we don't really have a reason to believe you."

"True," Rika admitted nonchalantly with a shrug of her shoulders. "You probably don't have any reason at all. If I really wanted to, I could probably convince Shion using her past and lost love once upon a time-" She took a small amount of pleasure from the bewildered glare Shion shot her, "-but she probably won't even listen to me anyway, and I don't like her enough to go wasting my effort. So I'll try Rena instead."

Rena blinked, sinking down a little more into Keiichi's lap and beneath the blanket. "R-Rena..?"

"Yes. Rena." Rika paused to massage her temples, tormented by her headache from a lack of sleep and alcohol withdrawal. "You've had a first-hand experience with it, whether you know it or not. Remember when you moved to Ibaraki? How everything stopped making sense and seemed to devolve all around you? After your mother left?"

Rena's eyes were as wide as salad bowls by now, astonished and slightly frightened by Rika's claims, and understandably so: she never told anyone in this world. In all reality, Rika would have no way of knowing these things. "H-how do you know about that...?"

"Irrelevant." Rika dismissed this quickly with a wave of the hand and went on. "You left Hinamizawa, and your Hinamizawa syndrome came out of its dormant phase, which is the default phase that everyone's enters while they're in Hinamizawa due to the environment. Then, when stress and anxiety started to build up, it activated." She looked Rena in the eye at this point, gaze hard as opposed to the fear that was rising up from within Rena. "And you started to lose your mind. Didn't you?"

Rena mouthed for words, but no noises left her throat. Keiichi and Shion were silent, now ceasing in their active opposition to Rika's talk to look curiously at Rena, intrigued and confused. Judging by Rena's reaction, all of the things Rika was saying - at least, about her past - were true. And they were curious why they didn't know beforehand.

"Of course, you didn't one day just wake up and start hacking people up," Rika continued, unmoved by the bewildered look coming her way. "It was slower than that - more stable. A gradual decline of a perfectly normal girl's sanity until one day, you picked up a baseball bat and smashed out every window in your school. And then you came back here, where Irie put you on 'anti-depressants,' and you inexplicably returned to a stable mindset faster than any anti-depressant can even act. A pretty remarkable recovery." She flicked her gaze back at Rena now, looking straight through the girl's fearful and stunned look. "...unless, of course, they weren't anti-depressants at all. And that you had something else going on with you that you didn't know about."

Rena stared blankly and said nothing. Her face was of incredible shock, disbelief, confusion, and realization that came with realizing there were more puzzle pieces than she originally thought and that the picture she always dismissed as looking fine was as incomplete as she thought. It surely had also occurred to her that the Rika Furude she'd know was quite different than the one who was deftly dissecting her life one word at a time without even flinching. How else could she reply but with a stunned silence?

"Rika, enough of this," Keiichi interrupted, cutting into the silence with a stern tone. "Just stop it. Alright? That's none of your business, and it's none of ours. Rena's personal life has nothing to do with anything. So just stop it and accept that we're not going back to Hinamiza-"

"She's right."

Keiichi stopped in mid-word, flashing Rena in his lap an incredulous look. Shion looked equally perplexed, demanding simply, _"What?"_

"It makes sense," Rena muttered more to herself than anyone, staring at the fire with wide eyes. "Rena...had something wrong, and when she left, and...then the...bat...yes. It...makes sense. How everything fell apart...it was all Rena..."

"In your head," Rika reiterated. "The whole thing was in your head. And it's in every one of your heads, too," she said, pointing to Keiichi and Shion. "And not just you: with Satoko. With Mion. With Irie and all the other members of Hinamizawa, and with Satoshi-"

Shion's reaction was instant: "Don't you talk about my Satoshi, you little bitch."

Keiichi regarded this outburst with a look of incredulity, glancing quickly between Rena's shocked expression and Shion's furious one. Neither girl noticed him.

Rika simply shrugged again, reaching out to drop a bit of cardboard onto the fire, which burst into flame instantly. "It makes sense, really. Everyone was on medicine, then Satoshi stopped it for one reason or another, and then he lost his mind-"

"Shut up."

"-and Irie didn't have a choice but to put him in stasis and hope to wait out the most violent phase of his sickness-"

"Shut up."

"He's probably still in the Irie clinic right now, if the life support still works-"

Shion was on her feet in a flash. She saw red behind her eyes, and she shrieked _"Shut up!" _with a wild expression, magma bubbling up behind her face and igniting her skin. "Shut the _fuck _up, you little shit!"

Amazingly, Rika smiled, eyes sinking halfway closed in a confident, cool expression that came with her smug smile. "Are you going to shoot me, Shion Sonozaki? Is this going to go down like it always does, but with a gun this time?"

Shion seemed confused by this. Her brain moved slowly and sporadically beneath the heat whirling around her, and as she tried piecing together Rika's meaning, she looked down to what she hadn't realized she'd been holding. She was shocked to discover that she had her M16 tight in her hand, finger around the trigger, barrel level and aimed straight at Rika's smiling face. She never realized she had retrieved her weapon and was aiming it at her friend, seemingly intent on firing it at her. "...what...the hell..."

Rika merely chuckled, looking smugly down at the fire again. "A shame. It would have been an improvement from the knife..."

Keiichi was now certain that things were no longer making sense. In this moment of doubt and confusion, Keiichi truly started trying to interpret the things around him...and started to listen to what Rika was trying to tell them. "So you're telling me," he started, trying to sort it all out in his mind, "that we're all sick? With some...Hinamizawa syndrome? And that if...if we don't get treated for it, we'll all lose our minds?"

"There's no treatment," Rika informed him. "Irie was still working on it. He said he came up with something, but then this all happened, and I'm fairly certain he's dead. But regardless, the clinic is full of a sedative he was able to subtly distribute to all the villagers with more active tendencies so everything wouldn't fall apart. That's what we need: the sedative. If we intend to survive outside of Hinamizawa for any given amount of time, we need that sedative. If we don't..."

"We'll end up like Rena did," Rena finished, voice a shocked whisper. "We'll all end up like...Satoshi-kun...onikakushi'd..."

Shion pulled out of her daze at this point, resisting the urge to toss her weapon to the side for fear of it going off, merely lowering it and shaking her head in disbelief. "This is the craziest fucking thing I've ever heard of, you know that?"

"What's craziest about it?" Rika challenged in a mild tone, not looking up as she did so. "The idea itself, or the fact that it makes sense?"

"And the zombies. Don't forget the zombies." Keiichi scoffed now, as if realizing what he'd just said. "Conspiracies with sickness, on the run from zombie apocalypse...god, I could believe just about anything right now."

The four of them chuckled nervously. But unlike the others, Rika did so because she knew that there was no way he really would. Why, some of the things she could tell him...

"I want to be sure right now," Rika said after a moment, looking her friends in the eye. "We're going back to Hinamizawa. Is that right?"

Rena swallowed the lump in her throat, then nodded. "...yes. R-Rena...Rena will."

Keiichi sighed, running a hand through his bangs before muttering, "This is crazy, but...hell, why not. It beats sitting here."

Shion took the longest to reply, looking distantly at the darkness across the room with a pensive expression. "...I'll go," she conceded at last. "I'll go...but just because...just to see..." She looked down at her weapon now, eyes containing a mixture of sadness and longing. She didn't have to say anything for Rika to know it was in the hopes that maybe, just maybe, Satoshi was alive like Rika said he was.

Rika couldn't care less what motives she had, so long as they all agreed to go. "That's settled, then," she said, tossing another piece of cardboard and the last bit of wood onto the fire. "There's a truck in the back, and...well, you know that sign? 'Out of gas?' Yeah, it lied. The owner had all the gas in containers in the back." She gestured vaguely to where Hanyuu had discovered the stockpile. "There's enough to make it up to to mountain range; we can use the secret tunnel that connects to the abandoned well underneath the Sonozaki estate to get back into town. We'll leave in the morning."

Shion looked shocked again. "...that's a...only the family...even _I'm _not supposed to know about...how do you..?"

Rika looked up and looked Shion dead in the eye. "You don't want to know."

Shion said nothing after that, probably because she really didn't. Rika kind of didn't either.

Before the matter could be allowed to pass, though, Rena had one quiet question she had to ask: "Wh...why didn't you tell about this, Rika-chan? About this?"

"Because," Rika replied flatly. "If any of you had believed me, you would already have been crazy."

"I think this whole goddamn world is pretty crazy."

No one could argue with that.

In any case, they decided to turn in so they could leave the following morning so as to avoid the heat of the day. Rika finally relented and resigned herself to settling into the warm bundle of bodies under the single shared blanket they tried so hard to share equally, preparing for the wave of cold and darkness that followed the fire finally dying out. And Hanyuu made sure to remind her that she _needed _to try and sleep tonight; it was better for her to have a nightmare while she got a little bit of rest than if she lived a nightmare while she was awake and didn't get any rest at all. To say she was looking forward to this was an outright lie; she had been trying her damnedest to avoid sleep thus far, but it couldn't be avoided forever.

Her friends proved to be a wonderful comfort. Even as the chill of the night seeped into the gas station's unsealed interior and the blanket failed to fully cover them, their conjoined bodies and shared touch allowed a certain amount of heat to flow, plus the comfort of physical contact in the unnerving darkness around them. Rika settled neatly down into Shion's lap, finding a smile working over her lips as Rena reached over and started to stroke her hair, silently letting the girl know everything would be alright. She reached out and searched only briefly before she found Keiichi's hand, who gave hers a squeeze, and rested her head on Shion's shoulder. In one more way, Rika's "lone wolf" mentality faded just a little.

However, it was still cold, it was still dark, and it was still a world full of monsters. Regardless of how close they huddled together, with all the things on their minds, sleep was going to be hard to come by, even when you weren't trying to avoid it.

It was going to be a long night. The day that came after was looking to be even longer.


	7. No Place Like Home

**Chapter 7**

**No Place Like Home**

* * *

Believe it or not, Rika _did_ sleep, though it was against her better judgment...and it wasn't long before Rika discovered maybe her better judgment was onto something when it kept her tossing and turning half the night. Shion complained in the morning to let her know she had, too.

The night had been dreadful. Not a whole lot of sleeping had occurred, especially on Rika's end, and she was only slightly comforted from the weary, sleepy smiles she saw when she looked; they had about as much luck as she, it seemed.

It was still dark out, the first glow of dawn just starting to creep up over the horizon. The group warmed up a can of beans - the last they had - and used a water bottle to pour in some dried rice they had found laying around. They couldn't hope to start a fire and bring it all to a boil, so they ended up with cold beans, beef jerky, and cold rice soup for breakfast, topped off with a chocolate bar they had to split four ways. Hardly a gourmet meal, but given the circumstances, they were lucky to be eating at all. No one complained.

"This sucks."

Besides Shion. And no one argued with her. But besides that, no one complained much.

Rika finished first and inspected her gun, again admiring its glossy, shiny exterior, marred only by hand prints on the handle and speckles of blood by the barrel. It was a finely crafted weapon with a lot of power, and it commanded respect and fear from everyone who handled it - like the wary admiration one gave a cobra, fangs glimmering in the moonlight. And then her blade...Rika almost felt a sense of kinship, looking at it. She remembered when she held it in her hand when it was still innocent and clean - a virgin blade. Clean and glossy, never having seen a drop of blood in its life. Then it was forced into all this, its innocence robbed and its purity spoiled at the hang of another...she could relate to that. She knew what that felt like...she felt a little bad for it. But she felt a tinge of pride as well: she was giving this blade, this weapon of war, a chance to live the life it was meant to when someone else would let it sit in a rack somewhere and rust. It wasn't a relic: it was a weapon. Proud and strong - dirty from the use and veteranhood. If this sword was alive, she had a feeling she would be doing it a favor.

She wished someone had done _her_ a favor for her back then.

The sun was just barely rising by the time they were feeling brave enough to wander outside again, bringing along the gas canisters that had been stockpiled in the back that station owner had collected (Rika was aware of the bullet in the bullet in the corpse's head, though she didn't give it much thought). There were a few stray infected wandering around, but not that many; they seemed to have done an alright job of clearing the area the day before. It was a good thing, too, because as soon as Shion started trying to hotwire the truck, she tripped the alarm and brought in every infected wandering around within a hundred yards. Not a nice way to start out the day.

"Goddamn it, Shion!" Keiichi snapped, cocking his shotgun into the firing position. The collective roar that came rolling out of the wreckage seemed to emphasize his statement...or one-up it.

Rika scoffed, muttering "amateur" under her breath. "Obviously never stolen a car before..."

Shion didn't respond, snapping into her more leader-like persona. "Alright, let's do this! Rika, stand by the corner - take the ones that come around the building! Rena, cover her! Kei-chan, up front! I've got your ass!"

Everyone took up defensive positions at the corner of the building, the truck behind them a few meters away, standing as a small barrier to (hopefully) funnel the flow of impending zombies. Rika got down on one knee onto the cool dirt, Desert Eagle in one hand, her katana in the other, the blade resting against the ground as it was quite heavy for her to lift. She had two weapons out, but really she did this just for confidence; she could only fire with both hands, lest she lose her hold on the powerful weapon due to recoil. She was experimenting with this position. "Make sure I don't get flanked," she said over her shoulder.

Rena muttered "Got it," though the direction had been intended for Hanyuu. Whatever worked.

Since they had a view of the road, Shion and Keiichi opened fire first, covering up the sound of snarls and hollering with autofire and shotgun explosions. Rika didn't move, staring down her gunsights parallel with the wall she was against before she saw movement, and she squeezed the trigger. Her gleaming Desert Eagle let out a loud crack, and she nearly dropped the weapon before she fired again. An eight-shot magazine, too powerful to one-hand, a crowd of zombies rushing in...she couldn't do it. She fired one more time, blasted a zombie out of its boots, and dropped the gun. She barely had time to get a proper hold on her katana before she took a swing and brought a trio of zombies down to their knees, since that was all that was left of their legs. Rena was going on full-auto right behind her, drowning out the sound of the horde and filling her senses with the noise. It did good for her; she would much rather sync her rhythm with bullet volleys than the offensive screaming and snarling of the undead.

Their last encounter with the horde turned out to be one of those rarer, easier kind of hordes: where they all came from one spot and they just had to stand there and mow them down when they came too close. As it turned out, _real_ horde battles were 90 percent too close: there was that moment when they were approaching, about to swarm you, and the rest of the time was spent fighting for breathing room. It tended to be very tense, very scary, and incredibly claustrophobic. And rather bloody; at this point, there was no avoiding the sheets and sheets of blood splashing off of every wound inflicted on the dozens of infected swooping in all around, so you were bound to get messy. It was just unavoidable at that point.

Rika didn't fare as well this time around. She had zero cover and only only one gun covering her, and the zombies didn't have a bunch of cars to climb over, so they were on her a lot faster, and Rena's gunfire was swapped out for hatchet-swinging action after the second clip because she was just as swarmed, which meant there was nothing stopping the zombies behind the ones that punched, clawed, and kicked like savage animals. Rika kept on swinging, but she was getting pummeled; one kick landed square in her gut, doubling her over and knocking the air out of her, and the shove of the horde was all it took to put her on the ground.

The horde closed in, and Rika couldn't help but scream, senses filled with snarling faces and blood and claws and oh god they were everywhere they wanted her oh god FUCK make them stop make them stop it hurt stop stop it stop it stop it stop-

Relief came in the form of a shotgun blast. Two zombies were put down outright, the rest stumbled by peppering buckshot, and Keiichi leaped forward to club the remaining zombie before it could bring its foot down on Rika's face. Just as he slammed it into the wall, Rena called his name, giving him time to lower his head to avoid the blade that came slashing through the air where his head would have been. The top half of the zombie's head pattered to the ground, followed by its body sliding limply down against the blood-smeared wall.

Rika was on her feet in a blur, both hands gripping the handle of her katana with a death-grip, expression wild, looking for something else to kill. She heard sobbing; she looked around to see who to see Hanyuu floating in place, hugging her knees, bruises on her arms and blood on her face. Rika was blank for a moment before her adrenaline-rich mind registered that that was how _she_ looked, too...except Hanyuu wouldn't be covered in sickly warm zombie blood. Judging at the way she started swiping at her skin, though, she could probably feel it.

Gunfire stopped, indicating where Shion had either run out of ammo or stopped shooting. Just as Rika turned to check, since they were clear on this side, she heard a strange growling noise, a scream from Shion, and a wild shriek just before Shion went shooting out from behind the building into Rika's view, propelled by a blue blur that had knocked her off her feet and had slammed her into the ground. In a flash, the hooded infected had gotten on top of her, was now straddling her waist, and raised up its claws, bringing them down to rake two quadruplets of slashes across her shoulders.

It didn't get a second volley in: Keiichi fired, not close enough to deal the massive damage a shotgun could at close range but still enough to cause the infected to stumble off of her, slamming into the truck. Shion gave it a good kick from her spot on the ground in its groin (which, as it turns out, didn't affect a male infected like it would a regular man), and it looked ready to pounce on her again before Rika came charging in with a yell, leveling her katana and sticking the infected like a pig.

You'd think it would have felt that, but amazingly, it didn't seem to. Just as quickly as Rika had buried the blade straight through its gut to the hilt, it grabbed her shoulders, lifted her comparatively petite form clear off the ground, and chucked her around to the front of the vehicle, sending her bouncing off its hood and sprawling her across the ground. It moved to charge up to her, only to realize that it was pinned to the truck's door with the sword stuck through it and holding it in place, and it was reaching down to pulled out the blade when it realized it was staring down the barrel of an automatic shotgun.

Keiichi pulled the trigger, and the infected's now-empty hood slumped down to cover the bloody stump of its neck and to close the hole blown through the back. The body flopped down, still held up by the sword sticking through the truck door, limp as a boned fish. The geyser of brain tissue left a red streak across the top of the truck's cabin.

Rika attempted to push herself up off the ground, vision blurry, something hot trickling down her arm - it was blood, but she had blood all over her, so she didn't worry about whether it was hers or not. Somebody's arms were pulling on her, lifting her up, and she instinctively fought back, pausing when she was turned and showed a human face splattered with spots of red. She didn't recognize the girl right away, though she reminded her of Rena (turns out it _was _Rena), and something hot stuck into her head - she hissed in pain and tried to swat away whatever it was, only to find it was a hand. Ouch...what the hell? What did they do to her? Did they stab her in the head with something? Or maybe she hit the truck when she went across it...

Time seemed accelerated to Rika, and she didn't really understand much of what was being said to her, or what anyone was doing. They pulled her into something, possibly the truck, and it was a little while (or a long while) before she had her bearings enough to see that she was in the backseat of a truck, laying in Rena's lap, who was laying across the seats with her arms locked firmly around Rika's waist. She shook her head to clear it, and she thought her brains were rattling before she realized that was the truck, and that they were driving. Driving...where? Where were they...

...oh yeah. Hinamizawa. They were going back to get...Satoshi? No, not him...he was dead, wasn't he? Where were they headed...

Keiichi turned around in his seat, smiling when he saw that Rika was looking back at him with a dazed expression. "Hey," he said with one of his charming smiles. "You came to."

Rika tilted her head in confusion, immediately regretting doing so - her brain felt like it was in a blender every time she moved her head. "Ow..."

"Got a nice mark there," Shion commented from the driver's seat (or was it Mion? It was hard to tell, though the speckles of red on her face reminded Rika more of Shion, for some reason), glancing back at her in the rear-view mirror. "Now I know using your head is all part of that 'team effort' thing, but come on. If you wanted in _that _badly, you could have just used the door."

The joke was lost upon Rika, whose head was just now stopping its spinning, though slowly. "Wh-wha..?"

She felt a squeeze around her middle, and she placed her hands on Rena's arms, as if assuring that it was her and not something else.  
"Rika-chan hit her head...that jumpy-thing threw her and she hit her head. Her head."

"You blacked out for a while," Keiichi explained, going off of Rika's confused look. "We wanted to get out of there before the next wave came, so we packed up and left while you were still out of it..."

"Rena was scared," she whimpered, hugging Rika closer. "Rena was scared that...you'd...like...I..."

It took Rika a minute to realize why Rena would be breaking up a little bit, but then it dawned on her, and she found one of Rena's hands to rest her own over. "I'm okay, Rena," she assured her. "I just hit my head...that's all. I'll stay with you."

Rena didn't respond right away, sniffling as she unlocked one of her hands to close it around Rika's tightly with a whimper of "Rika-chan..."

"So yeah, that was kind of freaky," Shion said, looking back to the road...or rather, the large expanse of sandy rock and gravel that jostled the truck really good every now and then. Rika just now realized that Rena was probably holding her like she was to keep her from rocking around and hitting her head again. "By the way, you owe me a first-aid kit: I donated mine to patch your sorry ass up. You look like shit, you know that? You need to stop playing with those zombies out there. They're too rough for you."

"Aw, but they're so much fun," Rika replied dryly, making herself comfortable in Rena's lap. "Who else am I going to play with?"

"I dunno. Go harass a bull or something."

Rika chuckled, carefully tracing out the outline of her head. She followed the shape of a bit of medical wrap going up around her head, traced what felt like a bow-tie up on top, and sighed. "Rena tied a ribbon on top, didn't she?"

"Ohhhh, Rena can't help it! Rika-chan looks so adowable~!"

"Ah- hey, no! No 'take it home with me' mode in the truck!"

"Awww, but I wanna take her home with meeeeee~!"

"Oh come on, really?"

"Hey, don't make me turn this truck around!"

Laughter filled the interior of the truck, and despite the pain in her head and the dried zombie blood across her arms and soiling her dress even further, Rika couldn't help but join in. Zombie apocalypse had never felt so normal before.

* * *

They reached the basin of the mountains in the late afternoon; despite Shion's lead-footed tendencies and the relatively straight path going up, the bumpiness of the terrain made it slow-going, and Rika thought for sure some of the bumps Shion hit were going to tip them over. She didn't even need to hit anything to get them killed; thus proof that whoever gave Shion her license needed to get their brains inspected, possibly by a zombie.

The dizziness and disorientation had worn off by the time they were stepping outside into the hot sun once again, though Rika had made a special request of Shion to fork over her bottle of pain killers, which she immediately made use of. She had a nice crack in her skull at the moment, didn't sleep, got beat up by zombies, was covered in blood, and goddammit she needed her meds. That, and if Rena kept fiddling with what was probably an intricate bow on top of her head, she was going to kill her.

The second Rika's sandaled feet hit the hot dirt, she knew they were in the right spot: the cavern in front of them was built, shaped, and was as dark as she remembered, and the landmarks - few though they were - looked familiar. That, and this was the only hole in the mountain base for miles, so they had to be in the right spot.

Before they went on, though, Rika paused to look at her reflection in the hull of the truck, running her hands along the edges of the big ribbon tied up on her head out of medical bandaging. Turns out it was more than just for looks: it covered up the bloody spot that would have soaked through on top of her head, both being fashionable and effective at the same time. Even so, Rika laughed at the sight, then continued on to join her friends, who were smirking to themselves; Rena's cheeks were red, but Rika patted her arm with a shake of her head. "I like it. But I'm going to have to do something with my hair to make it fit in, don't you think?"

Apparently she did, as Rena squealed, immediately shutting up when her echo squealed back at her repeatedly from within the tunnel. After Shion had finished rubbing her ears and Keiichi _politely _asked that she never do that again, they ventured forth, the light from their flashlights shining through the darkness and illuminating the cold stone floor ahead of them. It'd be a bit of a walk, if Rika recalled; it went all the way through the mountain to the other side, directly into the Sonozaki estate's basement.

Rika considered whether or not she'd like to freak her friends out with her seemingly limitless knowledge and the fact that this cave let to the bottom of a well that the Sonozaki family used to throw bodies down, but decided against it. They looked nervous enough as it was.

Alas, Rika didn't have a gun anymore, because no one had thought to go looking for it when she got knocked unconscious. It was a little disappointing such a fine weapon had been wasted, but her major concern was that she was now wounded and locked into exclusive melee combat, which was a bad combination. She'd be relying on the others for a while until she got her own weapon, which she hated. Rika hated relying on others. It made her feel helpless.

"It'll be okay, Rika," Hanyuu said, sensing her distress; she smiled when Rika held her own hand for her. "We can do this...right?"

Rika nodded to herself with a smile. She had fallen to the rear of the group so she could gesture and nod to Hanyuu without anyone noticing. Yes, they could do it...it'd be Hell, but they could do it. Somehow.

...hopefully.

* * *

About an hour later, they reached the end of the tunnel, forced to ascend a ladder to make it into a big, cavernous room that seemed to be built out of the other side of a dungeon crafted out of the inside of a cave. Torches were present, but they had all gone out by now, left unattended to and expending their fuel since they'd last been lit. Shion took a while at the top before she decided that it was clear, reporting quietly back down for the others to ascend. Despite the tone of her voice, the echo seemed to bounce across the entire room above them.

Fortunately, the room was empty, as it was locked from across the Sonozaki estate's large garden outside. While the sheer amount of large and arcane torture devices were unnerving to say the least (especially to Shion, who had only been told about this place by her sister), the sheer emptiness and the way every noise echoed was a bit of a comfort to Rika. It was kind of strange, really; you'd think she'd be nervous in here. But for some reason, this sick room of death and pain was...soothing. Possibly because death was something that Rika had become very familiar with and was at peace with. Not that she was looking for it to happen to her...just that she was okay with it. Death wasn't a bad thing...at least, not for her. Maybe it was because that she was looking through the eyes of someone who had experienced death more than once that she could look at the things that delivered it and find no fear or dread in her heart. It wasn't a mystery to Rika: just death. Nothing to be afraid of.

...not to say she didn't give the table with a little cup of nails and a hammer a wide berth. _Knowing what to expect doesn't mean I won't avoid it if I can help it._

The group was slow, only because the horrified awe they felt slowed them down. Rika walking ahead at a faster pace than them was enough to subtly drop a cue and encourage them to hurry up. They didn't need to be tortured down here to want to leave, it seemed. Or maybe they remembered, in a distant world somewhere...

"Alright," Shion said, sitting her gun down along with her backpack of supplies to start messing with the lock to the door; it was easier to open from the outside, since the bolt locks and stuff were there. "Give me a minute and I'll have this thing open. Cover me."

"Yeah, sure," Keiichi replied boredly, adjusting the purse (everyone was still snickering about) on his shoulder. He pulled a shotgun shell out of it, inspecting it in his shotgun's flashlight. "Just as long as you don't set off another alarm or anything."

Rika scoffed, shaking her head as she considered dumping her knapsack of useless ammo. "You'd make a lousy thief..."

No sooner did Rika say this was there a tiny, delicate little snapping noise. "Damn." She stuck her hand out behind her, palm-open. "Rena, gimme a hair clip."

Rena looked reluctant, though she complied with a nudge from Keiichi, reaching under her beret and handing the aforementioned hair clip to Shion, who didn't mind the curly brunette hair hanging out of it.

"Okay," Rika said, fingering the outline of her katana's handle. "Here's the plan: we go to the Sonozaki estate and go inside really quick so I can get another gun and restock on ammo. The garage door should still be wrecked, since Shion embraced her inner road rage-" Shion snickered at this, "-so we'll go through there. Then we can go down the hill, pass the school, and head down to the clinic. Then we all need a dose of that sedative; the sooner we inject it, the better."

It took Keiichi a minute to register exactly what was said. "...wait. Inject...like, with needles?"

Rika shrugged nonchalantly. "Most of the stuff made is for injection. The only orally-taken version of the sedative was given to Rena, so I'm guessing the rest is all injected. It works best that way; less processing going on with it. Best to go straight into the bloodstream."

"So we're going into a zombie-infested village, running to the other side, and sticking ourselves with needles full of some unknown chemical for a disease none of us know about?"

"No. I'll inject it for you."

Keiicvi muttered "Yeah, right," chuckling at what he thought was a joke. Rika merely shown her light at her face to show him her dead-serious face. "...seriously?"

"I have a steady hand."

Keiichi didn't look assured. Rena let out a little gulping noise. Shion grunted; "I hate shots."

"You'll live."

"Not at this rate."

Rika didn't comment, allowing the conversation to end with silence.

It was a few more seconds before the lock clicked again, and Rika thought maybe Shion had messed up before there was a louder clack after it, followed by a groaning noise as the huge doors slowly turned outward on their squeaky hinges. The ominous atmosphere was amplified by the dim light as it filtered through the fog that had descended like death over the valley of Hinamizawa.

Nobody moved - everyone else because they didn't want to go out and Rika because she was waiting for Hanyuu to report whether it all clear or not. After being told to be careful, Rika nodded to herself, pulled out her sword, and used the metal-on-metal noise as extra confidence as she stepped forward into the fog. The others were compelled now and followed after, the door creepily easing closed behind them. _Like a goddamn horror movie._

While the other side of the mountains was deep in the eternal dryness of being in a rain shadow, Hinamizawa seemed to be nearing the end of its dry season, now being tormented as a slow, steady trickle of moisture fell from the sky and taunted the deprived ground beneath, summoning a fog as the air cooled and the ground remained warm.

The path through the garden seemed to stretch on forever; every step seemed like a step in the opposite direction, their destination growing farther and farther away in the haze as they crept warily forward. Eventually they reached the Sonozaki estate itself, debris scattered across the driveway, a gaping hole in the garage where the door used to be. Shion snickered at the sight.

The quartet jumped the fence and came around to the smashed garage door, wandering inside as Shion opened the door. As she did, Hanyuu quickly floated in front of Rika, stopping her with a warning of, "Rika, tongue-thing!"

Rika whirled around, fingers tightly curled around the handle of her sword as she relayed to the others, "Smoker."

While they never officially named any of the forms they'd met, they all knew what Rika meant and brought their guns up to compensate, following her gaze. They heard a distant coughing noise, saw a green blur in the haze, and two guns went off, firing in short bursts. The coughing continued, unfazed as it grew more distant and ceased entirely.

No one needed prompting, as they all hurried inside on their own. Rika slammed the door behind them as Shion made use of a chair to make sure it stayed closed behind them.

They were inside now, but nobody said much, as the area wasn't deemed entirely safe. It hadn't even been a full two days since they'd last been here, and already it was impossible to recognize this place as the home of one of the wealthiest families in Hinamizawa. It had been a mess before, but now it was a complete derelict; the walls were splintered, furniture overthrown and tossed across the room, and water was starting to leak through the ceiling, pattering onto the floor. It could have been her imagination, but it seemed to Rika that there were more bodies here than when they first came through...

Rika didn't dwell on it as she stepped into the armory in the Sonozaki's basement.

"Let's make it quick, you guys," Shion prompted, grabbing a handful of ammo to stuff in her pockets. "I...I don't want to stay."

It was an understandable desire, considering a lot of her family - sister included - lived here once. Rika, however, suspected alterior motives.

Speaking of whom, Rika was casually strolling past a rack of guns, torn between the long-range capabilities of a streamline sniper rifle to counter her katana's in-your-face-only range limitations or an Uzi to compliment the auto-salvo the others possessed. Deciding they'd be better off with more variety and longer range, Rika scooped up the sniper rifle, which was nearly as long as she was tall, and removed the extension to the barrel (which would affect the weapon's range slightly, but only for extreme distances) before she slung it over her shoulder. She then stocked up on what looked like proper magazines to fit into it before returning to the group, who looked ready to go. Everyone had enough ammo to spare.

Before they left, though, there was a hard thump from above, evoking a jerk and a look from everyone. No one moved for a moment, providing Hanyuu a chance to poke her head up through the ceiling to the floor upstairs. Just as everyone else shared a look, Hanyuu reported: "I don't know what it was, but it was big; it knocked the front door down, Rika."

Not exactly music to Rika's ears. "Great," she muttered, stepping past Shion. "C'mon, go. Didn't you want to get out of here?"

Shion curled her lip, brushing curtly past Rika as she re-assumed her position in front. It pleased Rika somewhat that she still knew how to push people's buttons.

They proceeded upstairs slowly, though Rika continued past them at a regular pace, Shion still vying for the lead. Sure enough, the front door had been knocked down, nearly broken in two just under the doorknob. No one really wanted to know what it was that had dealt what had sounded like a single blow hard enough to smash it clear off its hinges and almost break it in half. _How big do these things get, anyway?_

Rika shook her head at this thought, then froze when she heard a loud trumpeting noise...which was quickly followed by a black shape lancing out of the fog and barreling straight towards them. "Holy-!"

Everyone dove aside in the time allotted...except Rena, who had just come through the door and was still looking around to see what was happening. She never saw what hit her: one minute she was standing there, and the next minute there was a blur and a noise someone made when punched in the stomach, an M16 and a white beret falling to the ground where she had been standing a moment before. The suddenness of the strike stunned everyone left standing; it must have bumped Keiichi, because he was sprawled out across the ground like he'd been hit by a car.

The blur with Rena in front of it slammed into the far wall of the room they'd come just out of, smashing through the weakened wood like a hammer through glass, and while it was enough to make the creature stop itself, Rena continued to fly across the room, bouncing across the floor like a rag doll. The creature swung its massive arm as it let out another trumpeting noise, evoking a challenge as it moved awkwardly towards a very dazed Rena.

This was about the time it took for Shion to step up, drop to one knee, and unload into the creature's back. While it was eight feet tall and had skin like a rhino's, the one-armed monstrosity apparently was still no match for gunfire, though it certainly seemed durable, twisting around to put its massive arm in front of it to try and cushion some of the shots. As Shion unloaded, Rika holstered her sword to whip out her new sniper rifle, peering down the scope to find a good spot to place her first shot. As Shion held the beast in place with auto-fire, Rika fired once, skimmed its shoulder, then pulled the trigger again, the succession of the shots nearly knocking her onto her butt from the recoil. Luck must have been on her side, though, as the shot that should have gone wild ended up exactly where she'd been aiming to hit the first time. The monstrosity didn't let out a noise and merely flopped forward with a _thump, _a hole burrowed straight through its forehead.

Keiichi was rushing forward before the kill had even been confirmed, leaped over the creature's arm, which was nearly the size of him, to come to his friend's side. "Rena!"

Rena appeared dazed and bruised, but not too badly hurt, considering she'd just been rammed through a wall. "K-Keiichi-kun," she said, sounding distant. "Wh-what...how..."

"This thing jumped out and rammed you," Keiichi said, pointing to the giant brown-green corpse with clearly overgrown overalls. It appeared to have been a farmer once. "Didn't you see it?"

"N-no..." Sure enough, Rena looked at the monster like she was seeing it for the first time. "It...hit Rena..?"

"It came out fast...I barely saw it, either. Like a cavalry charge."

Great: the zombie army had developed its own custom cavalry units. Just what they needed.

After making sure that Rena wasn't too badly hurt and that she didn't end up with a concussion like Rika had, the shaken girl was given back her beret and weapon, given a friendly pat on the head from Keiichi like he always did (Rika took particular notice of the smile Rena got when he did that), and given a clean bill of health, minus some minor cuts and a nice bruise on her shoulder. She had a limp for a little while, but it started to wear off as she got her bearings back together and was dismissed as battered, but fine. Time to move on.

They proceeded (carefully) down the hill from there, giving all of the cars they saw a wide berth so as to avoid setting off their alarms again, like they did the first time they were here. Here they were somewhat relieved with the presence of regular infected again and went back to their regular schedule of carefully picking off idle zombies as they staggered blindly around in the mist. Despite the visual obstruction, none of the zombies seemed particularly affected by the fog itself, and would come running and hollering just as eagerly as ever whenever the survivors got within a certain range, whether they could see them or not. It was possible they could smell them, or that their other senses were good enough that they didn't need their sight, though this brought up the question of why none of the other infected in the area came running when they heard the guns going off and saw their brothers going down. The group then decided that the infected were potential, but not particularly intelligent. This was confirmed as they all paused to watch a pair of zombies suddenly jump up and start beating the hell out of each other for seemingly no reason before Rika put them out of their misery with a twin-headshot.

Another interesting feature the infected displayed: through her long-range scope, Rika observed a few of the infected stumbling before they paused, doubled over, and vomited what looked like blood and bits of tissue all over the ground without warning. She mentioned this aloud, even letting Shion take a look for herself, though she was unpleasantly surprised when Shion suddenly snatched the rifle out of her hands and fired, then shoved the weapon back towards Rika. As she looked back to where she had been looking, the infected in question no longer had a head and was on the ground in its own vomit.

She snapped "What the hell!" at Shion, but the greenette didn't respond, marching down the hill with an air of barely-contained anger with a tight grip on her rifle, firing more than was necessary into a single infected and the one that came over to investigate. Rika gave a look to Keiichi and Rena, then Hanyuu, but none of them said anything and looked away. Rika grunted in annoyance, muttering "Asshole" as she slipped a pair of long, fang-like sniper rifle rounds into her current magazine; ditching the whole magazine would be a waste. She dismissed it along with the others, though she was still thinking unpleasant thoughts in Shion's direction for a while.

The fog made navigating a hazard, but all of them knew the Hinamizawa region by heart and didn't need to see any of the signs or landmarks to know where they were going. Rena in particular seemed to recognize this area, hurrying ahead a few steps until she got to a small wooden bridge, gasping when she saw the water wheel still spinning at the nearby mill. "Look, Keiichi-kun!" she said, pointing. "That's the water mill, the water mill! And that..." She looked back where they'd come, spying a big tree along the side of the path.

Keiichi recognized it as well, expression lighting up with realization. "This is the way we used to walk to school every morning," he said brightly, pleasantly surprised. "Mion'd come down from there, and we'd all walk together down this path over this bridge, right up to the schoolhouse."

Rena giggled happily with a nod. "Satoko-chan and Rika-chan would always be there for us, and she'd always have a trap waiting for you, Keiichi-kun! Rena remembers!"

Rika couldn't help but smile at these fond memories. "It feels like a lifetime ago," she said quietly, eyes unfocused as she reminisced in the general direction of where the schoolhouse would be. "Everything was so happy. Normal."

Rena nodded, expression falling into something akin to sorrow. "Then...one day..."

The unspoken words that followed caused everyone to sigh, shaking their heads sadly. They had been fond days, bad then...and then everything change. No warning, no signs...normal one minute, insanity the next.

"So delicate," Rika muttered, tone low to match the deeper meaning behind her words. "You'd think the facade of order would be...just a little more genuine. That life wouldn't be so frail. It can all be perfect, and then one moment later, it's all gone, never to be put back together again. Just broken glass and memories."

Everyone nodded slowly, either thoughtful enough not to be overtaken by the deep words or too distracted to do much else but nod to not give away they weren't listening. All eyes were set on the path ahead, one image or another passing before their eyes - memories of the past, or imagining footsteps of their loved ones falling in places they'd never know for sure. Rika was looking quietly as she watched purple-tinted crystals fall slowly all around her, images playing across them on a hundred planes, falling, falling...only lost and never to be caught...

The melancholy silence was marred only by Rena's footsteps as she started to numbly walk, gun barrel tracing the ground behind her. She almost looked like she was in a trance, the way she walked, and the movement was enough to pull everyone from their own moments of reflection to continue on towards their intended destination. Rika fell in step last so no one would notice her holding her own hand.

There were a pair of infected along the way, but the reflex of raising their guns and mowing them down was so ingrained into them by now that it didn't break the mood with the tenseness it might have before. Now they just walked, arms raising guns and fingers pulling triggers, ignoring the bodies that went down or the ringing that hung in their ears a few seconds after. Just a will to live and a trigger finger.

They reached the schoolhouse, but no one moved to approach it. Rena stopped in place, carefully laying her gun on the ground so she could go down on her knees, placing her hands on the semi-damp soil, running her hands over it like the very dirt between her fingers contained memories of their own. Keiichi looked over the building quietly, coming up to Rena to get on a knee beside her, one arm going around her shoulder. Rika closed her eyes and inhaled a deep breath, remembering the smells of the summer flowers and freshly cut grass and hot soil after a summer's rain, the laughter of school children all around her, the anticipation warm and lively in her chest at the thought of what game they'd be playing after school or who would get snared in one of Satoko's traps instead of Keiichi by accident.

Shion propped her gun on her shoulder and, having no such memories of her own, merely kept watch as the others remembered in silence. She was a bit of a curt girl, but it seemed even Shion could respect someone's desire for a quiet moment. She knew how it felt to lose love ones. They all did, now, but she knew beforehand. She knew.

Rika did, too. She knew it all too well. She just wished it got better after it happened the first hundred times or so.

No one moved for a while, silence hanging all around them so squarely that it seemed like someone exhaling could be heard clear across the valley. In fact, it was only in this silence that the most delicate and unnoticeable of noises could be heard, though only if one sat there in absolute stillness and listened...

"Gunfire."

Rika's eyes popped open exactly as Hanyuu said this. Sure enough, as she listened, she could hear a distant, barely audible popping noise, each pop uneven with the one before it, coming in a steady, staggered stream from somewhere that seemed far away. "Gunfire, semi-automatic," she declared, stepping forward a step...then several more steps, each one faster than the other. "A pistol. Coming from the clinic. Irie had a pistol in his desk."

That was all that the others needed to hear before they rapidly collected their belongings and took off running after Rika, who was sprinting up the path ahead of them. They were lucky there weren't many infected around, because rushing forward this recklessly into a foggy, potential zombie-infested area would have been a dangerous move indeed. As it was, Rika heard gunfire directly behind her as the others put down the few infected that spotted her and took off running after her, only to be put down from the ones already in pursuit. She didn't care: she had somewhere to be. Now. And she was going to get there. _Now._

That said, it probably would have been a good idea to slow down, as it would have given them all more time to hear the noises up ahead. Like the roaring. And the sound of the ground being split...and possibly more time to react to the scream of _"Tank!" _coming from behind her just before a section of the dirt road had decided to jump out of the ground and fly straight towards Rika's face.

Rika dropped like a weight, as did the others behind her to avoid the block of rock and dirt that sailed through the air where it would have bowled every one of them down like pins. Thanks to the angle of the hill it came down from, the block of debris went sailing at an angle so that it passed over all four of them, catching ground as it lowered and spinning wildly down the hill, the sound of smashing wood indicating where it had crashed into the schoolhouse. It likely took out an entire wall...or many.

The monstrosity that sent it was soon soon to follow, and no sooner was everyone back on their feet were they screaming and yelling, trying to dive out of the way of the tan freight train of meat and rage that came flying down to try its luck with bowling with its own self. Its roar of anger after it missed matched the roar in their memories, and they were all terrified to discover that this huge-armed, bear-sized monstrosity was the very one they had nearly been killed by two nights before. It was even more frightening when they didn't have a car between it and them to take the beating for them...and now they had to fight it.

The creature went sliding past them as it tried mowing them down with its own bulk, digging in its feet and hands as it realized it'd missed and wanted to go back up so it could beat their heads in. Everyone was already scrambling to their feet and running like mad by the time it came to a full stop, though, which ensured for a chase, the creature's massive arms slamming down and propelling it up the hill after them. Despite it's massive size and weight enough to shake the ground with every bounding step, it was easily able to keep pace with them and keep them from escaping.

Since they obviously weren't going to outrun it, Rika turned and squeezed off a round from her sniper rifle, struggling to maintain her footing from the recoil as she ran. That was the only problem with having a big gun in a small body: it made for balance problems if not standing securely in place. What's more, while she managed to hit the creature, it was completely unfazed by the spot or red where the bullet had landed in its leathery hide. She doubted she could hit any of its vital points, if it had any, which would effectively render a precision weapon llike a sniper rifle completely useless. _Should have gone with the Uzi..._

"Spread out!" Shion yelled from behind, trying to call over the creature's snarling and roaring. "It can't chase all of us - scatter!"

And scatter they did. Rika abruptly changed course and shot to the right with Rena not far behind. Shion split off and headed around for the edge of the Irie clinic to use the building as cover; Keiichi thought along the same line and made a beeline for the nearby trees.

Confused with its suddenly dispersing prey, the Tank looked perplexed, pace slowing as it considered who to go after before a spray of buckshot caught it's attention, and it charged...straight at Keiichi. Who shrieked in terror and resumed running like hell. "Aaaaahhh! Shoot it, shoot it!"

And they did. All three girls stopped in their running so that they could go parallel with the behemoth as it chased down their friend, coating its body with bloody welts and bullet holes. However, the creature's durability wasn't just for show, as it demonstrated with the ability to absorb hundreds and hundreds of bullets from three different weapons without slowing down. Shooting it was like shooting a whale: it could feel it and did damage, sure, but there was just so much of it that almost didn't seem to matter. And of course it didn't like being shot, so after a while of terrorizing Keiichi, the Tank started juggling targets, going after whoever was closest at the time. Shion was fairly aggressive and stayed within a relatively close range so as to being out the maximum potential of her M16, which made her a nice alternative target to start chasing after. Keiichi wanted to get closer so his shotgun could work its magic, which got its attention again and sent it back after him. Rena kept her distance, so it continually switched between Shion and Keiichi until Rika made the mistake of trying to score a headshot and disfiguring the freaky's cheek, which made it turn, roar at her, and charge.

_Oh shit._

"Run, Rika!"

She didn't need to be told twice. Hell, she didn't even need to be told once. What else was she going to do but run the fuck away?

And she did just that: she ran as fast as her legs could carry her, which was harder than it sounded; she'd been running around this whole time, absorbing the shock from her gun's fire, moving constantly to pursue the Tank as it raced around and carved up the ground with its massive fists and thunderous steps. By the time it set its sights on her, Rika - who was in the body of a little girl, no matter what her mentality was - was already running out of steam. The adrenaline would only count for so much until she would run out of energy, collapse, and be crushed out of existence. She knew this...and it scared the piss out of her, encouraging her to go faster despite the fire starting to build up in her calves and thighs. _Fuck, fuck, fuck!_

Rika ran like mad down the hill again, as that's where a trip around the clinic had steered her, gunshots and grunts and howls indicating where the behemoth thundered behind her. She was terrified now - a will to live atop flying feet and pumping arms, someone's breath raging against the back of her throat, making it raw. Spots flashed before her eyes, expanding into little rings and dissolving into red as she ran - couldn't feel her legs under her. She knew they were tired, though, despite her will to continue. She was running out of fuel, and she knew it. She had to escape - hide. Get away from this thing. Somehow. Had to escape. Had to...

Rika barely saw the headlights before the van came flying through out of the mist, nearly running her over as it swung to the side and screeched to a halt. Both plain white doors swung open, and a pair of men with guns leaped out, now heading towards her.

At first Rika was relieved - oh thank _God, _more survivors, and more guns! - and she was just starting to blurt out the news of the impending monstrosity that seemed to be after her like a homing missile when she realized they had their hands on her arms and were tugging on her, trying to subdue her. "What the fuck are you doing? Tank-!"

Neither man seemed to listen, grunting orders to each other, trying to pull her towards the van, each wearing a pair of sunglasses and a hat that did an odd job of covering up their identities, along with their plain tan uniforms that looked not unlike that of a regular delivery man's. They each had combat boots and a sidearm on their belts, plus the weapons they were adjusting so they could hold both their automatic rifles and the girl they seemed to be determined to escape with, her adrenaline high the only thing holding them back.

It then occurred to her that maybe not every survivor out there was necessarily on the same side...or working towards the same goal.

Rika screamed.

The men didn't seem fazed, continuing to pull her towards their van...that is, until they noticed their van wasn't where it had been a minute ago, now on its side with a massive dent in it. Where it had been was now where a wall of meat and muscle was charging, snarling and bloody, covered in bullet holes, rage contorting its face, death in its eyes...

The men's stoic composure pretty much disappeared at that sight, and their objective to detain Rika was abandoned to make up for their new goal: shoot the fuck out of that monstrous thing. Rika dropped to the ground as the beast came over her, feet pounding on either side of her head, denting the ground in not an inch from either ear. Too consumed in its bloodlust and rage to notice the smaller target, the Tank charged forward with ferocious abandon, swinging its arms and howling wildly as it took on the first living thing it saw. Somehow, it managed to pass over Rika without crushing her completely.

Rika scrambled to her feet, ignored the gunfire behind her, and ran like a madman back up the hill. She paid no heed to the screams that started to come from both men as the gunfire reduced to from one weapon, then only one set of screaming, and then nothing at all.

The others were waiting for her, antsy with worry but too filled with fear to descend the hill and go after the Tank. They looked ready to make a break for it - either to the clinic or to the bottom of the hill, where they could still hear the chaos - when a Rika-sized shape came ambling out of the mist, sprint reduced to an exhausted stagger, bow of bandages sagging atop her head to mirror her fatigue. "Rika!"

Rika didn't reply...couldn't, rather, throat too hoarse from all the panting and tongue coated in a film of thick saliva to do much more but fall to her knees, gasping like she hadn't breathed in hours as she crawled forward, still desperate to get away and escape. Rena descended like a hawk to scoop her up, and the quartet of tired, battered friends burst into the clinic, slamming the shattered glass doors behind them.

Keiichi and Shion dropped their weapons and quickly started to barricade the door with whatever physical objects they could get their hands on that weren't nailed to the floor. Rena adopted a more nurturing position, cradling Rika with a frantically worried expression, not even minding the beret that slid off the side of her head and plopped to the floor. "Breath, Rika-chan," she requested, voice lined with borderline panic. Her eyes were wide and appeared to be on vibrate, they were looking her over so quickly. "Are you okay? Are you hurt? Did the monster hit you? Are you okay? Can you breath? T-tell Rena where it hurts..."

Rika shook her head, not daring to stop her gasping for breath for fear of losing that precious bit of oxygen. Her lungs were on fire, her legs burned, her throat felt scratched raw...but she shook her head, then flopped it back, taking whatever seconds she could to relax, even for just a moment. She couldn't see Hanyuu, which wasn't that unusual...she had a habit of fading out of her awareness when they were both feeling miserable.

Rena guessed this meant she was fine and smiled, though her worry was still evident. "I-it's okay, Rika...the monster's gone now. You're safe. Take some deep breaths...breathe for Rena. For Rena."

Despite her gasping, Rika smiled just a little bit, and this seemed to ease Rena's worry enough so that she wasn't frantically looking her over or bombarding the younger girl with questions to see it was okay. No, she hadn't been hurt...at least, not too badly. She was physically spent and rattled like wheat stalk in an April storm, but she was alive, and it seemed she would stay that way. Just let her catch her breath for a minute...or a few minutes, actually. An hour. Four days would do nicely.

It wasn't long before Shion and Keiichi had run out of stuff to jam in front of the door and came back by Rena and Rika, collapsing onto the floor as they, too, caught there breath. All their hearts were hammering, both from fear and the rush that came with fighting for your life, and relief eased in on them gradually, nerves still taut and ready and breaths occasionally stopping so they could listen for any signs the monster was still out there or approaching.

They heard something, though, and it was enough for them to all suck in one last breath, grab their guns, and angle the barrels towards the source of the noise coming from the hall that lead to the offices in the clinic. Rika jolted upright and dropped to a knee, scope pointing straight down the hallway, looking for movement.

It was quiet, the noise...a small _creak, _then another _creak, _then a pause that lasted for several long, tense seconds as the others let out small puffs of air to compensate for their low breathing in an effort to stay silent. Then another _creak _came, which was followed by a tiny _click _and a slight twitch from the doorknob, which was immediately everyone's focus, plus the door that slowly, quietly, started to open. Nothing came out at first, but the very tip of a gun - a 9mm with a silencer strapped to the end - was barely visible along the bottom of the window built into the door, the words _"Irie's Office" _painted in chipped white letters along the glass.

It was fairly presumable who it was from that point, and the others were aware of this, starting to lower their guns, watching the door intently for who was behind it. Rika, however, gripped her sniper rifle even tighter, memories of men in delivery-like uniforms and shady hats fresh in her mind from before. "Show yourself," Rika ordered, tenor low and threatening. "Move slowly or else. Now."

The other person didn't move right away, frozen in place behind the door. The gun's tip slowly eased downward out of their view until it emerged past the edge of the door, slowly being lowered to the floor by a bloody, gloved hand before their eyes. The hand hovered a good few inches away from it, showing it was empty, and the person on the other side slowly started to push the door open further, gradually removing his cover more and more, inch by inch, until-

Rika dropped down her rifle, slumping back on the ground; the tenseness itself was exhausting, and she breathed out wearily, "Irie."

The brown-haired doctor didn't move at first, eyes still sharp and alarmed at the sight of not one but _four _guns pointed at him, but relaxed as he started to identify whose faces were behind them. A shine appeared behind his cracked glasses, and he murmured something - probably something along the lines of "thank god" - before he had a pair of arms flung around him, suddenly struggling for footing. "A-ah!"

"Ohhhh, Irie-seneeeeeeeeeei!" Rena wailed, brought to tears with joy and squeezing the good doctor in one of her hugs generally reserved for "adowable" mode. "Rena-chan was scared - was scared! Rena-chan didn't think anyone was out here...ohh, Rena was scared we'd be alone! She was!"

It took Irie a second to righten himself, then chuckled as he returned Rena's warm (albeit somewhat crushing) hug. "H-heh...I'm glad to see you too, Ryuguu-san. And..." He looked up, naming the relieved faces he saw smiling back at him. "Maebara-san, and Furude-san, and Sonozaki-san...I'm so glad to see you made it. I didn't think that...under the circumstances..."

"Us, either," Keiichi admitted, rubbing the back of his head sheepishly. He caught Shion's expression coming his way, and he enlightened her, "Irie-sensei is the town's doctor. He takes really good care of everyone here, and everyone likes him. He's a swell guy."

"And also the only one who threatens to take anyone home besides Rena," Rika pointed out, evoking a laugh from everyone. Rena regarded Irie at this news with a bewildered, almost awe-struck expression that all but clearly asked, "You too?"

Irie's expression was aglow with a smile...then suddenly serious, worry crossing his features as he stood straight up and pried Rena off him. "Rika-chan, have you seen-"

"Gone." Rika's face was straight and featureless as she said this, no more emotional than the debris-littered floor under her feet. "I watched the whole thing."

Irie didn't seem to hear her at first, expression of worry frozen on his face where it had stopped in mid-sentence. Then, as the situation slowly revealed itself and the bad news unfolded before his eyes, he looked away, the gleam of his glasses obscuring his eyes. "...I see."

No one seemed to know what they were talking about at first until Rena sniffled, hugging her arms with a tearful expression. "S-Satoko-chan..."

The familiar pain and sadness passed over them all. For Irie, the grief was fresh and new, and the news that his favorite patient and friend - the girl who he'd spent night after night sleepless, considering whether or not he should adopt her or gather the nerve to propose to her when she was of age - had been stolen from them. From everyone.

There was a long, awkward silence that came over the group until Irie spoke once again, still not facing them directly, eyes obscured by the angle of light on his fractured glasses. "Well, I...that's just...how these things go, then...h-ha..."

Rika scowled and scoffed. "If you're going to pretend you aren't heartbroken, at least put some effort into it."

Rena gave Rika a firm nudge. "Rika."

Rika snorted moodily, swatting the girl's hand away. "Don't give me that. If we don't agree to understand each other's feelings, let's all just eat our guns right now. I'm serious."

Rika's friends responded to Rika's curtness with surprise and resentment. Irie, however, merely chuckled. "No, no, she's right," he said, even as he removed his glasses to wipe away the forming tears. "I shouldn't pretend like it's nothing. I just hope I can trust you all with the...w-weakness of a full-grown man crying."

"Tears aren't weakness," Keiichi told him, stepping up to put a hand on his sensei's shoulder. "I'm sure we've all cried enough so it doesn't really matter. We made it this far, right?"

Rena nodded with glossy eyes, hugging Irie. "Rena misses S-Satoko-chan too...she does."

Rika had already made her point and said nothing, walking away to let her friends grieve. She walked over to one of the windows Shion stood beside; all the windows were boarded up, but there was a sufficient gap between two boards for Shion to prop her gun up and use the sights to stare off into the mist. "See anything?"

Shion scowled, then waved Rika over without turning to look. "Use your scope - check this out."

Rika briefly returned to her sniper rifle to pop off the scope, going back and leaning up on her tip-toes to gaze through it like binoculars. She had some pretty intense range, so she had to zoom out to see what Shion was looking at. She saw the faded silhouette of the Tank outside standing beside a wrecked van, hands darkened with something wet, looking for something to do. There were gunshots as it vanished again, then returned a moment later, confused by the distant sniper rounds punching into it until it collapsed without warning. The sniper that put it down fired a few more shots before the noise faded away, effectively hiding its origin once again.

Shion shook her head, instinctively stepping away from the window and the sniper's possible gunsights. "That van wasn't ours," she muttered. "There were people in it. Did you see them?"

Rika gazed at the dead Tank a while longer before pulling the scope away from her eye, leaving a ring behind. "They grabbed me before the Tank crushed them."

Shion didn't look particularly surprised. "Mystery men grabbing children, giant zombies, some CEDA..." She shook her head. "What the hell's going on in Hinamizawa?"

Rika hooked her scope back on her sniper rifle, glancing at a now sobbing Irie being comforted by Rena and Keiichi. Hanyuu hovered nearby unseen, looking thoughtful. "Probably nothing that hasn't happened before."


End file.
